TrackLight, an AI-assisted fraud detection startup in El Dorado Hills, has raised a seed round of $3 million led by Sacramento investor BarronKent and Growth Factory Ventures in Rocklin.
Co-founded last summer by fraud prevention veterans Greg Loos, its CEO, and Linda Miller, its chief growth officer, the company has also been accepted into NVIDIA Corp.’s (Nadsaq: NVDA) Inception Program, receiving a $100,000 grant to test its artificial intelligence models.
“TrackLight is leading a major shift in the fraud detection and prevention industry. Their innovative use of AI to identify and address fraud before it happens is truly groundbreaking,” said David Peregrine, managing director of BarronKent, in a news release. “The momentum they’ve built and their potential to transform fraud prevention make them a standout in the market.”
Loos was formerly president of Folsom-based Pondera Solutions, a platform focused on finding fraud in government entitlement programs before checks get sent. Founded locally in 2011, Pondera Solutions was sold for $125 million in 2020 to Thomson Reuters Corp. (NYSE: TRI).
Similarly, TrackLight uses AI in fraud detection and prevention to identify fraud before payments are issued.
“The impressive results they have demonstrated for customers highlights the significant impact they are poised to make in the private and public sectors,” said Rick Spencer, managing partner with Growth Factory, in a news release.
“Over the course of my career, I’ve seen tens of billions in fraud discovered, but only a fraction of it recovered,” said Loos, in a news release. “As a taxpayer, this doesn’t sit well with me. I made a decision to come back to the fraud-fighting industry to deal with 'unfinished business,' applying new breakthroughs in AI technology to create a platform that meaningfully solves the fraud problem."
TrackLight uses specialized AI models, machine learning and a library of over 3,000 fraud schemes to scan open-source records to fight fraud, waste and abuse in government programs and for other customers.
The company was founded last July, and has been operating in stealth mode for a year with beta customers reviewing products, the company said. TrackLight co-founder Miller has been a principal of national accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP, and she served as a senior analyst with the U.S. Government Accountability Office and as deputy executive director of the federal Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.
BarronKent is a family office private investment vehicle that Robert Rodriguez and his partner and wife Grietje Reuter founded in 2022 to make investments in technology, real estate and professional staffing.
Rodriguez was the founder of Cambria Solutions, a consulting company he started in 2003 and sold to Ernst & Young LLP in 2022. The value of that transaction was not disclosed. Cambria was an information technology consulting firm that specialized in government and health care work. It had 300 employees and eight offices across the country when it sold. Reuter has had a career as an IT consultant.
The Growth Factory Ventures fund is a local early-stage investment vehicle managed by the Growth Factory and representing just under 99 accredited investors.
Meanwhile, the founder and former CEO of Pondera, Jon Coss, recently founded Plum Identity, a Granite Bay startup that offers a platform to fight fraud, waste and abuse in government programs without invading people’s privacy or keeping personally identifiable information. Plum Identity checks for behavioral data, anomalies and user locations to look for fraud and bots, but it doesn’t keep any of the data.
