SILENT Eight, an artificial intelligence-powered anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing startup, has raised an oversubscribed US$6.2 million Series A round. SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s innovation, fintech investment and ventures unit, has participated in this investment round.

Standard Chartered is Silent Eight's most significant live deployment. After a successful proof of concept of Silent Eight's solution, it was implemented in 2018. Today, Silent Eight is optimizing the bank’s name screening process at scale: across all business lines, in over 40 markets, including the US, UK, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

Alex Manson, global head of SC Ventures, says: "The complexity of our financial system creates a demand for technologies that make financial crime compliance both more effective and more efficient. Silent Eight uses artificial intelligence to improve financial institutions’ name screening process, hence enabling better decisions. By investing in Silent Eight, we will help them scale across our footprint, participate in an area of growth seeing huge investments by financial firms and support our overall commitment to the global fight against financial crime.”

This investment follows from another announcement made November 13 that Standard Chartered has joined forces with Quantexa, a contextual decision intelligence software company, to use big data analytics and artificial intelligence to combat financial crime globally. Developed in partnership, the new contextual intelligence platform will enable Standard Chartered to conduct complex financial thematic investigations more efficiently and effectively, demonstrating their ongoing commitment to upholding the highest global standards in compliance and risk management.