I tried to fool my brother, sort of.
Next to him and his Pekingese on the couch, without context or introduction, I played an audio clip of me—deepfake audio of my voice that I’d asked cybersecurity startup Doppel to make. Fake Me’s voice sounded distressed, stilted, and just persuasive enough that he narrowed his eyes, scrunched his nose, and asked: “That’s AI, right?” My extremely online brother was far from fooled, but he was unsettled.
I’d asked Doppel to show me (as viscerally as possible) what deepfake audio sounded like at a moment where, as a society, we’ve perhaps never been more aware of them. The rise of generative AI-powered deepfakes has taken a technology that’s long been alarming and made it increasingly ubiquitous.
In recent months, deepfakes have been rapidly improving, said Kevin Tian, Doppel CEO and cofounder. Doppel Simulations demonstrates the state of social engineering attacks to companies, is used for training, and to test vulnerabilities.
“Our simulation capabilities are very much like vibe coding,” he told Fortune. “You give it a prompt, and that AI agent can then construct a phishing social engineering campaign that hits you specifically on your phone, maybe shoots off an SMS right after that phone call to confirm some things. Of course, you can still do the traditional phishing email…But over the past few months, what’s gotten significantly better is the ability to do real-time, synchronous deepfake conversations in an intelligent manner. I can chat with my own deepfake in real-time. It’s not scripted, it’s dynamic.”
In 2016, Tian and Rahul Madduluri met at Uber. Both eventually left and in 2022, the pair cofounded Doppel, which they started originally to help crypto companies with impersonations. But quickly, they realized the problem was a lot bigger, that “the most dangerous thing about AI is how easy it is to impersonate anyone,” said Tian. The company started to build a platform that solved that existential problem for enterprises and was listed in this year’s Fortune Cyber 60 list.
Now, about six months after its Series B, Doppel has attracted more capital: The startup has raised its $70 million Series C at a more than $600 million valuation, Fortune has exclusively learned. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, with participation from new investors like CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz and NTT Docomo Ventures along with existing investors like Andreessen Horowitz, 9Yards Capital, Script Capital, South Park Commons, Sozo Ventures, and Strategic Cyber Ventures. (This Series C marks a 3x jump in valuation, the company says.)
There are some sports-associated investors also in the mix, including Aurum Partners (linked with San Francisco 49ers ownership and other LPs) and an investor group led by the WNBA’s Nneka Ogwumike, Breanna Stewart, and Kelsey Plum (via the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund). The company said it has seen 400% growth in its enterprise customer base since 2024 and that it serves “dozens” of Fortune 500 customers. Rahul Madduluri, Doppel cofounder and CTO, said via email that the round is “fuel for engineering, speed, and expansion.” But there’s a nuance—the precise goal isn’t to stop deepfakes entirely.
“The thought process is that a deepfake is one signal. And there are actually benevolent deepfakes now, with the way enterprises are deploying deepfake technology,” said Tian. “You’ve got people using digital avatars. Like, if I were on a flight right now, I could actually use a deepfake to talk to you and share the Doppel story. So, that’s why our mission is not to stop deepfakes. It’s to stop social engineering attacks, and the malicious use of deepfakes, traditional impersonations, copycatting, fraud, phishing—you name it.”
Doppel—named for the word doppelgänger—has no shortage of competitors, including Bolster, ZeroFox, KnowBe4, and Netcraft.
“There are a lot of legacy players who serve the space today with whom Doppel competes,” said Elliott Robinson, Bessemer growth equity partner, via email. “The overwhelming majority of these players focus on digital risk protection and security awareness training who protect against email and domain-based attacks. But they are not positioned to address today’s social engineering attack landscape.”
As Tian has worked with customers, he’s learned that there’s an area of enterprises that’s especially at-risk: Customer service.
“It’s a vulnerable population,” said Tian. They don’t have the luxury of hanging up on a call just because it sounds suspicious. “And it’s not fair, because these people are trained to be helpful. They’re trained to take phone calls, they’re trained to respond to messages, to comply with requests, to be patient. It’s a tough job.”
Tian gets at something essential: That some of the biggest cybersecurity risks remain human, and require human training and intuition. (Perhaps something like my brother furrowing his eyebrows and deciding that audio wasn’t me at all.)
“You can’t hard-code every role out there in the world,” he said. “You can’t get training data on every edge case in the world. So, you have to teach humans and models to reason through what’s going to be bad for your organization, and what’s safe.”
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.
Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
Venture Deals
- Lambda, a San Francisco-based superintelligence cloud, raised $1.5 billion in Series E funding. TWG Global led the round and was joined by Thomas Tull’s US Innovative Technology Fund and existing investors.
- Venn, a New York City-based operating system for multifamily housing, raised $52 million in Series B funding. NOA and CIM Group led the round and were joined by Group 11, Oren Zeev, and others.
- Maxima, a San Mateo, Calif.-based agentic AI platform designed for accounting automation, raised $41 million across Seed and Series A rounds from Redpoint Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Audacious Ventures, and others.
- Agentio, a New York City-based AI-powered platform for creator-led advertising, raised $40 million in Series B funding. Forerunner led the round and was joined by Benchmark, Craft Ventures, and others.
- GetVocal, a Paris, France-based conversational AI platform designed for customer service, raised $26 million in Series A funding. Creandum led the round and was joined by Elaia and Speedinvest.
- VahatiCor, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based developer of medical technology for patients with Coronary Microvascular Dysfunction, raised $23 million in Series B funding. S3 Ventures led the round and was joined by others.
- Sphere, a San Francisco-based cross-border compliance platform, raised $21 million in Series A funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round and was joined by Y Combinator and Felicis Ventures.
- OpenHands, a Boston, Mass.-based open platform for cloud coding agents, raised $18.8 million in Series A funding. Madrona led the round and was joined by Menlo Ventures, Obvious Ventures, Fujitsu Ventures, and Alumni Ventures.
- Quindar, a Denver, Colo.-based platform designed for monitoring and automating spacecraft operations, raised $18 million in Series A funding. Washington Harbour led the round and was joined by Booz Allen Ventures, FUSE, FCVC, and Y Combinator.
- TULU, a New York City-based product access and usage platform, raised $17 million in a Series A extension. GreenSoil PropTech Ventures, Bosch Ventures, and New Era Capital Partners led the round and were joined by Regeneration.VC, Good Company, Aviv Growth Ventures, and i3 Partners.
- Datum, a New York City-based open network cloud, raised $13.6 million in seed funding from Amplify Partners, CRV, Vervin Ventures, and others.
- Jiga, a San Francisco-based AI-powered sourcing platform, raised $12 million in Series A funding. Aleph led the round and was joined by Symbol and Y Combinator.
- PicoJool, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based developer of optical chips and modules designed for high-bandwidth, low-cost connectivity in hyperscale AI data centers, raised $12 million in funding. Playground Global led the round.
- Xenia, a Chicago, Ill.-based developer of AI-powered operations software for multi-location organizations, raised $12 million in Series A investment from PSG.
- Condukt, a London, U.K.-based compliance platform for financial services, raised $10 million in funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners and MMC Ventures led the round and were joined by Cocoa Ventures.
- Hammerhead AI, a Redwood City, Calif.-based company focused on improving energy efficiency , raised $10 million in seed funding. Buoyant Ventures led the round and was joined by SE Ventures, AINA Climate AI Ventures, MCJ Collective, and others.
- Emm, a London, U.K.-based developer of a smart menstrual cup and connected app, raised $9 million in seed funding. Lunar Ventures led the round and was joined by the Labcorp Venture Fund, Tiny VC, BlueLion Global, Alumni Ventures, and angel investors.
- Voltrac, a Valencia, Spain-based developer of an unmanned vehicle designed to perform agricultural labor autonomously, raised €7 million ($8.1 million) in seed funding. Extantia led the round and was joined by FoodLabs and others.
- Lumia, a Boston, Mass.-based developer of smart earrings designed to track blood flow to the head, raised $7 million in funding from J2 Ventures, BonAngels Venture Partners, and angel investors.
- Shipday, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based delivery and logistics technology platform for small and medium-sized businesses, raised $7 million in Series A funding. ECP Growth and Ibex led the round and were joined by B Capital and Supply Chain Ventures.
- Asseta AI, a New York City-based accounting platform designed for family offices, raised $4.2 million in seed funding. Nyca Partners and Motive Partners led the round.
- AlertD, a San Francisco-based agentic AI site reliability engineering and DevOps platform, raised $3 million in pre-seed funding. True Ventures led the round.
- Poppy, a Charlottesville, Va.-based wedding florist platform, raised $2.7 million in Series A funding. Michigan Capital Network led the round and was joined by Virginia Venture Partners, Wakestream Ventures, IDEA Fund Partners, and Front Porch Ventures.
Private Equity
- Long Ridge Equity Partners led a $45 million investment in GoTu Technology, a Miami, Fla.-based dental talent marketplace. J.P. Morgan Asset Management also participated in the investment.
- BGF invested £30 million ($39.5 million) in TMT ID, a London, U.K.-based mobile data intelligence company.
- Amplix, a portfolio company of Gemspring Capital, acquired 24By7Security, a Coral Springs, Fla.-based consulting and compliance company. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Angeles Equity Partners acquired a majority stake in Technique, a Jackson, Mich.-based metal fabrication solutions company. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Thoma Bravo agreed to acquire a majority stake in Azul, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company designed to help organizations run Java workloads faster. Financial terms were not disclosed.
People
- Team8, a New York City-based venture capital firm, hired Galia Beer-Gabel as managing partner. Formerly, she was with PayPal.
Exits
- General Atlantic acquired a minority stake in SmartHR, a Tokyo, Japan-based HR and labor management software company, from Coral Capital for $96 million.
