Brothers Patrick and Ryan Coughlin, each with impressive careers in the tech industry (Patrick worked in national cyber defense, and at Splunk and Cisco; and Ryan with consumer products at Apple and Spotify), have launched a new kind of security startup.
Savi Security seeks to protect everyday folks from the new crop of incredibly convincing AI-generated scams, whether they’re routed via text, emails, or phone calls.
The company just raised $7 million in seed funding, and is launching its app for iPhone and Android on Tuesday. The round was led by Acrew Capital, with participation from Magnify Ventures, TTCER, and Resolute Ventures.
The inspiration for the company came from a horrifying incident involving the founders’ mother.
About two years ago, Patrick Coughlin’s mom called him, distraught, saying she had just received a phone call from a man saying he had kidnapped Coughlin’s sister. He was senior vice president of security products at Cisco at the time. (He landed there after Splunk bought his cloud security startup TruSTAR for a reported $82 million in May 2021. In 2024, Cisco bought Splunk.)
Her mobile phone rang with the caller ID of her daughter, Coughlin recounted. During that call, “she thinks she hears my sister’s voice saying, ‘Mom, they’ve got me.’ There’s a blood-curdling scream, and then my sister says, ‘You’ve got to do what they tell you.’ And then a man comes on the phone and says, ‘If you don’t pay us $1,200 right now, we’re going to kill your daughter in the parking lot of the local Walmart,’” he continued.
The scammer had accurately spoofed Coughlin’s sister’s number, her voice, and referenced the location of the Walmart she frequented.
Fortunately, the mom kept her wits, called the daughter, and discovered that she was fine. The kidnapping was an AI-gen …