Sardine, an agentic risk platform focused on combating financial crime, has secured a $25m Series C extension led by National Bank of Canada, bringing its total funding raised to $170m.
The investment follows a live platform evaluation in which Sardine demonstrated improved fraud detection and a reduction in false positives, with the bank citing these results as the basis for its decision to deepen the commercial relationship. As part of the multi-year partnership agreement, National Bank of Canada will roll out Sardine’s device intelligence and real-time risk scoring capabilities across its retail, commercial, and wealth operations.
National Bank of Canada is one of Canada’s largest financial institutions, serving around 2.7 million clients worldwide. NAventures, the bank’s corporate venture capital arm, was already an existing investor in Sardine prior to this latest commitment, making the Series C extension a significant doubling down on that position.
Sardine’s platform operates as an agentic risk solution designed to help banks detect and prevent fraud without creating unnecessary friction for genuine customers. The company profiles devices and assigns real-time risk scores, enabling financial institutions to modernise their financial crime prevention operations at scale.
The partnership with National Bank of Canada forms part of a broader pattern of growth for Sardine within the financial services sector, with the company continuing to expand its footprint among banks and wealth managers seeking more scalable approaches to combating financial crime.
NAventures partner Joshuah Lebacq said, “After closely following Sardine’s growth and hearing strong feedback from existing customers, we decided to conduct an extensive evaluation of their platform. The results gave us confidence to make Sardine a strong addition to our financial crime prevention operations and expand our commercial relationship.”
Lebacq added, “We’re excited about the potential of agentic AI, especially in the risk and compliance sphere, and Sardine’s financial crime agents are setting the standard for the category.”
Sardine CEO and co-founder Soups Ranjan said, “Sardine was built for banks that need to stop fraud without slowing down their loyal customers. National Bank of Canada is one of the most respected financial institutions in North America, and we’re proud to support their financial crime operations as they continue to set the standard for digital banking in Canada.”
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