A new research report indicates that artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the fraud landscape, significantly amplifying new and traditional risks. According to CBInsights, sophisticated tactics such as synthetic identities, deepfakes, voice cloning, and swarms of autonomous bots now operate alongside classic methods like account takeovers and money laundering. In 2025, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded an all-time high of $21 billion in fraud losses.
Large language models now enable online attackers to craft highly convincing phishing messages, fabricate official documents, and perform real-time voice impersonations, compelling banks, fintech firms, and other enterprises to overhaul their security strategies.
A recent CB Insights market map highlights more than 200 promising companies developing advanced technologies and infrastructure to combat AI-enabled fraud and establish trust in an increasingly autonomous digital world.
Analysts reviewed over 1,800 firms and selected recently funded players showing strong potential according to the Mosaic score, a proprietary metric that evaluates funding activity, team quality, market positioning, and sentiment.
These innovators are organized into three primary categories spanning 17 sub-markets, with particular emphasis on AI-specific challenges while incorporating complementary areas like blockchain forensics and quantum-resistant cryptography.
Investment has surged in direct response to these escalating threats.
Equity funding for fraud detection and prevention solutions jumped 3.5 times between 2024 and 2025 as organizations sought tools that could harness machine learning for defense while simultaneously guarding against AI-generated assaults.
Sub-sectors including transaction monitoring, synthetic content detection, and bot mitigation drew substantial capital to move beyond outdated rule-based approaches toward more adaptive, intelligent systems.
Funding for digital identity and verifiable credentials more than doubled, reflecting the growing recognition that strong human verification remains essential even as machines take on greater roles.
Within the broader fraud detection space, orchestration and case management platforms achieved the highest average Mosaic scores, placing them in the top percentile.
These comprehensive solutions integrate risk scoring, alert handling, compliance workflows, and dispute resolution into unified platforms.
By minimizing fragmentation, they enable quicker and more effective responses to intricate, multi-channel fraud schemes accelerated by artificial intelligence.
A defining trend in 2026 is the rapid emergence of agentic trust infrastructure, which addresses a critical gap in systems originally designed for human actors.
When autonomous AI agents initiate transactions independently, traditional verification signals around identity, intent, and authorization simply do not exist.
This new category encompasses agent authentication, runtime governance, and observability tools.
It stands out with 99 percent average year-over-year headcount growth, 2026 year-to-date funding that already surpasses the entire previous year, and the earliest commercial maturity indicators on the map.
Solutions in agent authentication and authorization create verifiable, persistent identities for AI agents, linking them securely to human or organizational owners through cryptographic methods and policy controls.
Runtime governance platforms deliver real-time oversight, defend against prompt injection attacks, and maintain detailed audit logs.
Observability and evaluation tools provide tracing, performance monitoring, and drift detection essential for ensuring agents behave as intended throughout complex workflows.
Digital identity technologies, including advanced KYC processes, biometrics with liveness detection, decentralized identifiers, and passwordless systems, continue to serve as foundational defenses.
Biometric approaches support continuous authentication across sessions, while decentralized models leverage zero-knowledge proofs to balance privacy and compliance.
Emerging regulations such as the EU’s eIDAS 2.0 further accelerate adoption. Meanwhile, post-quantum cryptography prepares systems for future computing threats.
Additional layers of protection span AI-generated content detection, anti-money laundering transaction monitoring, account takeover prevention, bot defense, graph-based network analysis, on-chain intelligence for cryptocurrency, and sophisticated risk scoring.
Key players in these areas are strengthening their positions as stablecoins and digital assets integrate deeper into mainstream finance.
As AI agents become commonplace in financial ecosystems, fraud prevention is shifting from reactive, human-centric controls to proactive, machine-native trust architectures.
CB Insights has concluded in the research report that integrated platforms combining detection, identity verification, governance, and observability are positioned to lead. For organizations across sectors, adopting these innovations is now indispensable for maintaining resilience, meeting regulatory demands, and gaining competitive strength in the AI-driven economy.