Cape AI

About Cape AI

Cape Privacy, founded in 2018, operates as a privacy-first platform for agentic search and workflow automation across enterprise data. Headquartered in New York City with a presence in Halifax, Canada, the company enables organizations to leverage AI-driven search and automation while maintaining stringent control over sensitive information. The business model appears to be enterprise SaaS, targeting sectors where data privacy is critical, such as financial services. Clients include firms like Amalgamated Bank and Blackstone Technology Group, which use the platform for tasks like streamlining marketing campaigns, automating new account openings, and enhancing due diligence processes.

The company's history is rooted in a pivot from its original focus. Initially, Cape Privacy developed a platform for collaborative machine learning using secure multiparty computation (SMPC), a cryptographic technique that allows multiple parties to jointly compute a function over their inputs while keeping those inputs private. This earlier iteration aimed to help financial institutions and other data-sensitive industries enrich their machine learning models by collaborating on encrypted data without violating privacy. The firm has since evolved its product to focus on agentic AI workflows. These are advanced automated processes where AI agents can autonomously plan, make decisions, and execute complex tasks with minimal human intervention, adapting to real-time data.

Cape's current platform unifies disparate data sources, whether on-premises or in the cloud, to orchestrate secure, automated workflows. Key features include using private Large Language Models (LLMs) for personalized marketing, Know Your Customer (KYC) processes, and third-party risk management. The platform offers tools to encrypt and redact sensitive information before it is processed by LLMs, ensuring data protection and compliance. For financial firms, this translates into tangible efficiencies, such as reducing marketing campaign deployment from weeks to minutes and automating the analysis of unstructured data like PDF documents for internal control testing.

The founding team includes Gavin Uhma (Co-founder & CTO) and Ben DeCoste (Co-founder & Head of Platform). Ché Wijesinghe serves as the CEO. Uhma is a serial entrepreneur, previously co-founding GoInstant, a co-browsing startup acquired by Salesforce.com in 2012 for a reported $70 million. His experience in building and scaling tech companies is a significant asset. Wijesinghe brings over 25 years of leadership in data, analytics, and AI technologies from roles at companies like Cisco and HEAVY.ai. This blend of entrepreneurial and enterprise software experience shapes Cape's strategy.

Cape Privacy has successfully raised $25 million in total funding over two rounds. A seed round in June 2020 brought in $5 million, co-led by boldstart ventures and Version One Ventures. This was followed by a $20 million Series A round in April 2021, led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from Tiger Global Management and other existing investors. This financial backing has been crucial for team growth and product development, enabling the company to navigate the competitive market for privacy-enhancing technologies.