DetectifAI Develops Voice-Authentication Models to Combat Deepfake Scams
The San Francisco startup is building tools that detect synthetic speech and verify speakers across phones, cloud systems, private infrastructure and telephony networks.
San Francisco-based DetectifAI is developing voice-authentication models that detect synthetic speech and verify speakers, addressing fraud that uses cloned voices to impersonate relatives, businesses and financial institutions.
Founder Tarini Sai Padmanabhuni said she started DetectifAI after her grandfather paid a ransom to someone using an AI-generated imitation of his brother’s voice.
“What stayed with me wasn’t the money. It was that he had no way of telling,” Padmanabhuni said.
The company’s models are designed to identify synthetic, cloned or manipulated speech and assess whether a speaker matches a claimed identity. They can operate through a hosted cloud API, inside a private customer environment, in a telephony edge system or directly on a device.
DetectifAI is targeting phone manufacturers, financial institutions and contact centers. Padmanabhuni said the company processes more than 100,000 calls a month for unnamed financial institutions in India, where AI voice agents handle debt collections and loan-document follow-ups. She said DetectifAI’s systems are used for deepfake detection and speaker verification in those calls.
“My grandfather didn’t have that,” Padmanabhuni said, referring to DetectifAI’s WhatsApp test for suspicious voice notes.
The FBI recorded 22,364 internet-crime complaints containing information about AI use in fraud during 2025. Adjusted losses totaled $893,346,472. Losses from distress scams exceeded $5 million in 2025, including cases involving voice cloning to impersonate loved ones during emergencies.
Synthetic audio and video are becoming easier to create and harder to detect, expanding the ways criminals can target individuals, businesses and financial institutions. DetectifAI’s approach is designed to let companies integrate detection into existing products, call flows and infrastructure rather than requiring every consumer to install a separate application.
DetectifAI is among the 200 early-stage companies in the 2026 Startup Battlefield cohort. The competition will culminate at Disrupt in San Francisco from Oct. 13-15, 2026.
