US blockchain giant Chainalysis has announced that it is acquiring Tel Aviv-based startup Alterya. This is the company's second acquisition in Israel after acquiring Hexagate last month. Chainalysis will pay $160 million for Alterya.
Alterya was founded in 2022 by CEO Elad Fouks and CTO Shahaf Gonen. Upon its founding, the company raised $9.8 million in seed funding led by Battery Ventures, with participation from NFX, Nyca, and the startup accelerator Y Combinator. Alterya and its 28 employees will continue to operate as an independent product line and an Israel R&D center.
Alterya specializes in preventing authorised-push-payment (APP) fraud, focusing on cryptocurrency and real-time payment networks. The company’s primary focus is early detection of social engineering scams, which in recent months have increasingly used AI to create synthetic identities and content designed to deceive end users.
Alterya has grown rapidly since launching its product 18 months ago. The company serves some of the world's biggest financial institutions, including Coinbase, Square, and Binance, as well as leading US banks. Through these partnerships, Alterya protects hundreds of millions of end customers globally. The company has developed a solution that integrates cybersecurity and AI capabilities for large-scale, cross-network detection, enabling real-time scam prevention for its customers, even before attackers reach their targets. In 2024, Alterya identified over $10 billion worth of crypto deals sent to scammers and helped its clients protect assets worth over $100 million.
Chainalysis CEO and cofounder Jonathan Levin said, "With this acquisition, Chainalysis can now provide real-time proactive fraud protection for payments and enhanced fraud detection during KYC for exchanges, blockchains, and wallet providers. Our acquisition of Alterya represents a significant step forward in our work to provide a holistic risk solution that includes prevention, compliance and remediation. Their mission to protect humans everywhere from fraud and scams - one of the highest grossing categories of crypto crime annually - is integral to our mission to build trust in blockchains. We’re thrilled to welcome Alterya to the team and expand our office in Tel Aviv to work on safeguarding billions of people from fraud and delivering safer and faster payments for all."
Fouks added, "Scams have become the biggest problem for financial services worldwide, while struggling to adopt alternative payment infrastructures due to the associated risks, particularly authorized fraud (scams). This problem has intensified over the past year with the widespread use of AI to create fake and synthetic digital identities and highly reliable fake content at scale and low cost, enabling fraudsters to deceive end users and bypass standard verification processes and fraud detection tools. Alterya has developed a solution that introduces a new paradigm in scam detection, leveraging AI and proprietary cybersecurity tools for large-scale, early detection to safeguard individuals and payment services.
Chainalysis, which develops products for blockchain analytics and data accessibility, employs over 700 people worldwide and serves financial institutions, governments, and law enforcement agencies.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on January 13, 2025.
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