Savi app shields consumers from AI voice scams like fake kidnappings

Two brothers with deep roots in tech innovation are turning their expertise toward a growing crisis: AI-powered scams that target everyday people. Patrick Coughlin, a veteran of national cyber defense and former executive at Splunk and Cisco, has teamed up with his brother Ryan, who built consumer products at Apple and Spotify, to launch Savi Security. The startup is designed to protect users from increasingly convincing AI-generated fraud delivered through texts, emails, or phone calls.

The company has secured $7 million in seed funding, led by Acrew Capital with backing from Magnify Ventures, TTCER, and Resolute Ventures. On Tuesday, Savi debuts its app for both iPhone and Android, bringing a new layer of defense to consumers.

The idea for Savi was born from a deeply personal and terrifying incident. About two years ago, Patrick Coughlin’s mother received a phone call that appeared to come from her daughter’s number. On the line, she heard what sounded like her daughter’s voice saying, “Mom, they’ve got me.” A blood-curdling scream followed, then a man demanded $1,200, threatening to kill the daughter at a local Walmart parking lot. The scammer had spoofed the correct phone number, cloned the daughter’s voice, and even referenced the Walmart she actually frequented. Fortunately, Coughlin’s mother kept calm, called her daughter, and confirmed she was safe. The kidnapping was entirely fabricated by AI.

That close call shook Coughlin, who was then a senior vice president at Cisco. He began to question how the same sophisticated tactics once aimed at governments and Fortune 500 companies were now being deployed against ordinary people. The answer, he realized, is the rise of cheap and powerful large language models and generative AI tools. Before AI, such scams were not financially viable for targeting consumers. They required extensive research, voice spoofing technology, and significant effort. Now, the costs are negligible, and the raw materials are everywhere.

“You can clone a voice off three seconds of audio, off a publicly available social media post,” Coughlin explains. “We’ve all got these traces of stuff out there in the ether , like where we’re talking or narrating; commenting on a kid’s football game while videotaping it, and putting it on Facebook.”

The scale of the problem is staggering. The FTC reported last month that people collectively lost $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025, triple the amount in 2020. While older Americans are most likely to report these crimes, research from Malwarebytes in 2025 found that Gen Z is targeted more often with text scams and falls for them about 25% of the time.

The Coughlin brothers set out to build a real-time intervention tool. They first tested their concept with a free, anonymous website called Scam Wise, where users can upload suspicious texts, photos, or emails for analysis. Launched about four months ago, it has already received 50,000 submissions and is growing by roughly 10,000 each week. This stream of real-world data has been crucial for training Savi’s scam-detection AI model, which currently relies on Google’s Gemini but is built on an AI gateway that can tap other models as needed.

Now, Savi Security is launching its paid app for iOS and Android. The app can screen texts, voicemails, and incoming calls for scams. While similar features exist in other products, Savi’s standout capability is live-call monitoring. During a suspicious phone conversation, a user can invite the app’s live agent to listen in. Savi analyzes behavioral cues in real time to determine if the call is a scam while it’s still happening.

Pricing is also designed with families in mind. Savi charges $8 per month, or $63 per year, to cover an entire household with no cap on the number of users. That means one plan can protect a person’s kids, spouse, parents, and that uncle who always needs tech support.

“AI has changed how accessible being a fraudster is,” Coughlin says. “We’re creating fraudsters because we’re bringing down the barrier of deceiving people. So not only do we have the organized criminals and the syndicates behind this, but everyday people are sort of being tempted into playing fraud.”

Savi Security’s answer is a new kind of digital armor: AI fighting AI in real time, just like the bad guys do.