Brothers Patrick and Ryan Coughlin, each with impressive tech careers, have launched a new security startup called Savi Security. Patrick worked in national cyber defense, at Splunk, and Cisco; Ryan has experience with consumer products at Apple and Spotify. Their new app, available today for iPhone and Android, aims to protect everyday folks from the new crop of incredibly convincing AI-generated scams routed via text, emails, or phone calls.
The inspiration for Savi came from a horrifying incident involving the founders' mother. About two years ago, she received a call from her daughter's number, with a cloned voice screaming: Mom, they've got me. Then a man demanded a $1,200 ransom, threatening to kill her daughter in the local Walmart parking lot. Fortunately, she remained calm, called her daughter, and discovered she was fine. It was an AI-generated scam.
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How Savi Security works in real time
Savi Security offers a paid app that screens texts, voicemails, and incoming calls for scams. Its most impressive feature is live-call monitoring: during a suspicious conversation, users can opt to add the app's live agent as a listener, analyzing behavioral tells to identify potential fraud in progress. The fee is $8 per month (discounted to $63 per year) to cover an entire family, with no cap on users. A single plan can protect kids, spouse, parents, and extended relatives.
The company just raised $7 million in seed funding, led by Acrew Capital, with participation from Magnify Ventures, TTCER, and Resolute Ventures. Before the app launch, the founders tested their scam-detection model with a free website called Scamwise, which collected 100,000 submissions over four months, providing valuable training data for Savi's AI.
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The rise of AI scams and consumer costs
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), people reporting online crimes collectively lost $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025, triple the amount in 2020. While older Americans are the majority of victims, Gen Z is highly susceptible: a 2025 Malwarebytes study reported Gen Z targeted more often with text scams and falling for them about 25% of the time.
Patrick Coughlin explains that AI has lowered the barrier for becoming a fraudster: you can clone a voice off three seconds of audio from a publicly available social media post. Before AI, such targeted scams were too costly and complex for common criminals, but now costs are negligible and research material easily available. Savi Security positions itself as a new generation of antivirus-like software, using AI in real time to defend people even as bad actors use it to swindle them.
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For more on AI security, read our article on Anthropic expanding Claude Cowork and the implications of AI in daily life. Also, check out how OpenAI is giving $300 to Americans, raising questions about AI wealth distribution.
For more information on AI scams, visit the Federal Trade Commission website.
