Making Millions Out Of Artificial Intelligence: Brighterion CEO Akli Adjaoute (Part 5)

Sramana: Are you selling to financial companies only?

Akli Adjaoute: No. We are working with Saffron Group, which owns a lot of European and U.S. companies. They are the top company for airport fingerprint technology. They are interested in doing the same type of real-time fraud prevention that we do with Mastercard. We are doing the same thing with [the Department of] Homeland Security. We have had some very interesting conversations with Raytheon as well as with Lockheed Martin for healthcare fraud.

Sramana: Why is Lockheed interested in healthcare fraud?

Akli Adjaoute: They actually do healthcare fraud for the government. I found it surprising as well.

Sramana: I understand what you are doing from an application point of view and technically. You moved your company to the U.S. in 1999 and called it Brighterion in the U.S. Did you keep the European company?

Akli Adjaoute: It is the same technology, but I gradually closed the European company. The difference is that in Europe I was selling 11 technologies to various markets. Brighterion was started specifically for designs in real time fraud prevention. With my previous company I had to use my people to integrate our solutions into our customers architectures. In the U.S. we have designed a product that accomplished anomaly detection and fraud prevention. That allows us to get a product installed at a bank in less than one week.

Sramana: Essentially you have transformed from a services company into a product company, is that correct?

Akli Adjaoute: Yes. Our product is easy to install today. We have really great detection rates with low false positives. Every customer is extremely happy with that. We can get a bank running our system in less than a week. We have more than 100 banks using this system today worldwide. The largest banks in the world use our system.

Sramana: What is your business model? Do customers buy licenses?

Akli Adjaoute: We sell license fees and also have transaction fees. Our pricing model is very different for each bank and varies based on number of transactions. The fees can go over $1 million per bank. Transaction fees can range based on volume and are competitive with the market.

Sramana: Did you ever raise external financing for your company in France?

Akli Adjaoute: No. I started initially by myself and I bootstrapped the company. I went from no revenue to over $1 million in revenue in under a year.

Sramana: When you came to the U.S. did you raise any money?

Akli Adjaoute: Initially I had one investor, which is the Sturm Group. That was a $2 million investment. Then MasterCard invested once they started using and selling the product later on.

Sramana: When you raised the money from Sturm Group, how did you manage the transfer of technology from your company in France to Brighterion?

Akli Adjaoute: I managed the transition because the majority of my European customers were using the same licenses. They have lifetime licenses. When I moved to the U.S., I knew there was no way to straddle two companies. I discontinued my previous companies product lines in 2005 and moved completely to Brighterion.

All of the Brighterion technology is based on what I did in France but it is completely different technology. When I raised money from Sturm Group we kept the European company separate. Brighterion only had a license from fraud detection from my European company. I have another company that owns the remainder of the European technologies.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Making Millions Out Of Artificial Intelligence: Brighterion CEO Akli Adjaoute
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