Lux Capital-backed Cloaked, a client app for consumer identification safety, launched an AI-powered caller screening and darkish internet monitoring characteristic immediately.
Cloaked’s caller screening characteristic, named Name Guard, takes a name from an unknown quantity and converses with the caller to grasp the intent. The instrument routinely filters out spam or probably scammy calls as an alternative of counting on customers to make the choice. It’s just like what Google launched for Pixel, and what Apple plans to roll out for iOS 26 customers. Third-party corporations like Truecaller have additionally used AI for name screening.
Customers can nonetheless see the complete transcript of the decision in real-time in case they need to take over the decision. Cloaked had already labored on creating the telephone infrastructure for its identification product that lets customers create new telephone numbers to masks their actual numbers. The startup is making the most of that tech, together with name forwarding, to guard customers from scams.
“We are trying to understand the intent of the caller using AI rather than just asking the name of the caller and why they are calling. From the data that users have shared with us, a large amount of spam calls and medicare calls, and then there are political calls. We have also observed that users are now receiving calls from bad AI agents, and we are training our AI agent to tackle that,” Cloaked CEO Arjun Bhatnagar stated.
Bhatnagar acknowledged that Apple and Google’s options are primarily based on an identical premise. He stated folks join attempting out these options, however retention numbers are low due to a scarcity of personalization, and that’s why startups like Cloaked can are available.
Whereas dealing with inbound calls is step one for Cloaked, the corporate needs to allow an outbound name facility that deploys AI-bots to carry the road whereas on a buyer assist name or reserving appointments. Cloaked can also be engaged on an eSIM product.
Moreover, the startup is releasing a darkish internet monitor for private information. The corporate observes completely different sources akin to information brokers, breach websites, compromised web sites, darkish internet boards, Discord, and Telegram for leaked consumer information. The instrument searches for names, addresses, social safety numbers, emails, relations, passports, and driver’s licenses.
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025
It reveals customers an alert when it finds such leaked information. The corporate additionally bifurcates these leaks into energetic/latest occasions and historic occasions, serving to customers take motion for his or her information.
The corporate additionally has a knowledge deletion program, by way of which customers can request websites and information brokers to delete information. Cloaked sends programmatic and authorized requests to those websites. The startup stated it has helped customers eliminate greater than 170 million data throughout the net.
Cloaked stated that it has added greater than 100,000 paying prospects because the starting of the yr and is seeing sturdy month-over-month development.
Till 2023, the startup had raised $29 million in funding. Bhatnagar stated that the corporate has gotten a further $11 million in funding from a mixture of present and new buyers, however it isn’t defining the spherical or disclosing the brand new buyers because it plans to shut a proper spherical by the tip of this yr.
