Brothers Patrick and Ryan Coughlin, each with impressive careers in the tech industry (Patrick worked in national cyber defense, Splunk, and Cisco; and Ryan with consumer products at Apple and Spotify), have launched a new kind of security startup.
Savi Security seeks to protect everyday folks from the new crop of incredibly convincing AI-generated scams, whether they’re routed via text, emails or phone calls.
The company just raised $7 million in seed funding, and is launching its app for iPhone and Android on Tuesday. The round was led by Acrew Capital, with participation from Magnify Ventures, TTCER, and Resolute Ventures.
The inspiration for the company came from a horrifying incident involving the founders’ mother.
About two years ago, Patrick Coughlin’s mom called him, distraught, saying she had just received a phone call from a man saying he had kidnapped Coughlin’s sister. He was senior vice president of security products at Cisco at the time. (He landed there after Splunk bought his cloud security startup TruSTAR for a reported $82 million in May 2021. In 2024, Cisco bought Splunk.)
