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As AI impersonation scams boom, startup imper.ai just raised $28M to stop deepfakes in real time

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Welcome to Eye on AI, with AI reporter Sharon Goldman. In this edition, a new startup is tackling AI impersonation…legal AI startup Harvey raised $160 million at an $8 billion valuation…VC ‘kingmaking’ is happening earlier than ever with AI startups…Why AI writes like that…Microsoft lowers sales staff’s growth targets for newer AI software.

A year ago, I spoke to several cybersecurity leaders at companies like SoftBank and Mastercard who were already sounding alarms about AI-powered impersonation threats, including deepfakes and voice clones. They warned that fraud would evolve quickly: The first wave of scams were about scammers using deepfakes to pretended to be someone you know. But attackers would soon begin using AI-generated video and audio to impersonate strangers from trusted sources, such as a help-desk rep from your bank or an IT administrator at work. 

A year later, this is exactly what’s happening: The Identity Theft Resource Center reported a 148% surge in impersonation scams between April 2024 and March 2025, driven by scammers spinning up fake business websites, deploying lifelike AI chatbots, and generating voice agents that sound indistinguishable from real company representatives. In 2024 alone, the Federal Trade Commission recorded $2.95 billion in losses tied to impersonation scams.

Now, a new startup is stepping directly into the breach. imper.ai aims to stop AI impersonation attacks in real time, and today announced its public launch and $28 million in new funding. Redpoint Ventures and Battery Ventures led the investment round, with participation from Maple VC, Vessy VC, and Cerca Partners.

Instead of trying to spot visual or audio anomalies—an approach that is rapidly becoming almost impossible—imper.ai says it analyzes the digital breadcrumbs attackers can’t fake. These include device telemetry (the background data your device gives off, like location, operating system, hardware details, and network behavior), network diagnostics, and environmental signals. Its platform runs silently across systems including Zoom, Teams, Slack, WhatsApp, Google Workspace, and IT help-desk environments, flagging risky sessions before a human ever gets deceived.

CEO Noam Awadish, a veteran of autonomous-driving pioneer Mobileye and a longtime member of Israel’s 8200 cyberwarfare unit, said AI has supercharged classic social-engineering tactics—the kind of attacks that manipulate people into giving up sensitive information or approving actions that compromise security. Whether through impersonation, fake urgency, or psychological pressure, attackers are increasingly using AI to trick victims into revealing passwords, financial details, or remote access.

A recent example is Jaguar Land Rover. Last month hackers used  fake credentials to carry out coordinated phishing and “vishing” (voice-phishing) campaigns impersonating JLR’s IT support staff to harvest credentials and gain access. The attack forced the automaker to shut down critical IT systems and ultimately its production lines, resulting in estimated losses of $1.5 billion so far. 

Imper.ai’s founding team of Awadish, along with other 8200 veterans Anatoly Blighovsky and Rom Dudkiewicz, believes their background as both cyber attackers and defenders gives them an edge. “I think that people don’t understand that most of the major breaches start with social engineering,” Awadish told me, adding that AI is a game changer because emails, videos, and voice clones have become almost perfect. 

In addition, he pointed out that collaboration tools have multiplied far beyond email and phone calls. Now attackers have dozens of communication tools, and AI lets them generate “spear-phishing” messages (personalized phishing emails) at scale, as well as cloned voices, and deepfake videos at massive speed.

That’s why imper.ai avoids trying to out-detect AI impersonation directly from the AI-generated content itself. “We don’t want to get into an AI arms race,” Awadish said. Instead, the startup focuses on what attackers cannot fake—mostly metadata. 

As the company’s traction has accelerated, so has investor interest. “We want to build a platform that safeguards the entire communication space,” Awadish said. “ It’s not something small, it’s not like a plugin that one of the giants is going to build.” With the new funding, he said that the company can double its R&D headcount and triple its go-to-market organization in the US.  

“At the moment, there is really high traction, so we need to keep up with the pace, so we need to grow,” he said. 

Note: I am super-excited to be headed to San Francisco for Fortune Brainstorm AI on Monday and Tuesday! I’ll be interviewing Prakhar Mehrotra, SVP and global head of AI at PayPal, and Marc Hamilton, VP of solutions architecture and engineering at Nvidia, on the main stage. I’ll also be moderating a spicy roundtable session all about AI data centers. Plus, I’m looking forward to seeing some of the other speakers, including actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap, and Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks.

And with that, here’s more AI news.

Sharon Goldman
sharon.goldman@fortune.com
@sharongoldman

FORTUNE ON AI

Microsoft AI wants all its employees to be AI-native by the end of the fiscal year, says VP of design Liz Danzico–by Angelica Ang

China’s ByteDance could be forced to sell TikTok U.S., but its quiet lead in AI will help it survive—and maybe even thrive–by Nicholas Gordon

Anthropic considers IPO despite warnings that excess liquidity is blowing a bubble in the markets–by Jim Edwards

Sam Altman declares ‘Code Red’ as Google’s Gemini surges—three years after ChatGPT caused Google CEO Sundar Pichai to do the same–by Sharon Goldman

ServiceNow’s president says acquiring identity and access management platform Veza will help customers track the whereabouts of AI agents—by Jeremy Kahn

AI IN THE NEWS

Legal AI startup Harvey raises $160 million at an $8 billion valuation. Harvey, one of the fastest-rising startups in the AI legal-tech boom, just raised $160 million at an $8 billion valuation, according to the New York Times. This more than doubles its valuation since February and brings its total funding this year to roughly $760 million. The four-year-old company, already used by about half of the Am Law 100, builds AI assistants that help lawyers draft and review documents, answer case-law questions, and automate routine workflows. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from T. Rowe Price, WndrCo, Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, and others, and signals that investor enthusiasm for AI tools built for white-collar professionals remains intense even as broader tech markets wobble.

VC ‘kingmaking’ is happening earlier than ever with AI startups. AI ERP startup DualEntry raised a $90 million Series A at a $415 million valuation—despite being just a year old—as Lightspeed and Khosla Ventures bet that a next-generation replacement for legacy systems like Oracle NetSuite can scale fast. But according to TechCrunch, the size of the round has revived questions about “kingmaking,” the increasingly common VC tactic of pouring huge sums into a single early-stage company to manufacture category dominance. While one investor told TechCrunch that DualEntry had only around $400,000 in ARR last summer—a figure the company disputes—the aggressive funding mirrors a broader shift: venture firms are picking winners earlier than ever. 

Why does AI write like that? I definitely wanted to shout out this (long) essay in the New York Times that is well worth a read. It argues that AI-generated writing has quietly become the dominant voice of the internet—shaping everything from student essays to political statements—with its now-familiar mix of em dashes, ghostly metaphors, triplets, and overpolished sincerity. What’s unsettling, the author writes, isn’t just that AI prose is everywhere, but that humans are starting to unconsciously imitate it, creating a feedback loop where machine-bred language becomes the default cultural tone. Personally, I had heard about how AI chatbots love the word “delve,” but not that they love ghostly words and all things “quiet”: “Everything is a shadow, or a memory, or a whisper. They also love quietness. For no obvious reason, and often against the logic of a narrative, they will describe things as being quiet, or softly humming.” 

Microsoft lowers sales staff’s growth targets for newer AI software. Like every other Big Tech company, Microsoft spent much of 2025 loudly touting AI agents as the next big leap in enterprise automation, but as the year ends the company is quietly dialing back expectations, according to new reporting from The Information. After multiple sales teams missed aggressive growth targets, Microsoft has relaxed quotas for certain AI products—an unusually public acknowledgment that traditional enterprises are still hesitant to pay for advanced automation. Customers say the ROI remains hard to measure and the tech too error-prone for high-stakes workflows like finance and cybersecurity. While AI has been a major boon to Microsoft’s cloud business—thanks largely to massive spending from OpenAI and strong demand for tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot—getting mainstream companies to significantly increase their AI budgets is proving far tougher than selling to AI labs.

AI CALENDAR

Dec. 2-7: NeurIPS, San Diego.

Dec. 8-9: Fortune Brainstorm AI San Francisco. Apply to attend here.

Jan. 7-10: Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas. 

March 12-18: SWSW, Austin. 

March 16-19: Nvidia GTC, San Jose. 

April 6-9: HumanX, San Francisco. 

EYE ON AI NUMBERS

221 Million

That’s how many YouTube users subscribe to so-called “AI slop” channels, or those posting mostly AI-generated content, according to a new report from cloud-based video editing platform Kapwing. 

The report analyzed 15,000 YouTube channels in 21 countries and identified which ones are posting AI-generated content. Then they examined their view counts, subscriber totals, and estimated earnings to find where “AI slop” channels are competing most aggressively with human creators.

The report found these channels have already amassed a combined 221 million subscribers, generated 63 billion views, and pull in more than $117 million each year.

Some notable findings from the report: 

  • The U.S.-based “AI slop” channel Cuentos Facinates has the most subscribers globally (5.95M).
  • Spain has eight such channels in their top 100 trending channels with a combined 20.22M subscribers, the most of any country.
  • These channels get the most views in South Korea (8.45B views across 11 trending channels).
  • India is home to the most-viewed “AI slop” channel, Bandar Apna Dost, with 2.07B views and an estimated $4.25M in annual earnings.



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Construction workers are earning up to 30% more in the data center boom

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December 5, 2025

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Big Tech’s AI arms race is fueling a massive investment surge in data centers with construction worker labor valued at a premium. 

Despite some concerns of an AI bubble, data center hyperscalers like Google, Amazon, and Meta continue to invest heavily into AI infrastructure. In effect, construction workers’ salaries are being inflated to satisfy a seemingly insatiable AI demand, experts tell Fortune.

In 2026 alone, upwards of $100 billion could be invested by tech companies into the data center buildout in the U.S., Raul Martynek, the CEO of DataBank, a company that contracts with tech giants to construct data centers, told Fortune.

In November, Bank of Americaestimated global hyperscale spending is rising 67% in 2025 and another 31% in 2026, totaling a massive $611 billion investment for the AI buildout in just two years.

Given the high demand, construction workers are experiencing a pay bump for data center projects.

Construction projects generally operate on tight margins, with clients being very cost-conscious, Fraser Patterson, CEO of Skillit, an AI-powered hiring platform for construction workers, told Fortune.

But some of the top 50 contractors by size in the country have seen their revenue double in a 12-month period based on data center construction, which is allowing them to pay their workers more, according to Patterson.

“Because of the huge demand and the nature of this construction work, which is fueling the arms race of AI… the budgets are not as tight,” he said. “I would say they’re a little more frothy.”

On Skillit, the average salary for construction projects that aren’t building data centers is $62,000, or $29.80 an hour, Patterson said. The workers that use the platform comprise 40 different trades and have a wide range of experience from heavy equipment operators to electricians, with eight years as the average years of experience.

But when it comes to data centers, the same workers make an average salary of $81,800 or $39.33 per hour, Patterson said, increasing salaries by just under 32% on average.

Some construction workers are even hitting the six-figure mark after their salaries rose for data center projects, according to The Wall Street Journal. And the data center boom doesn’t show any signs it’s slowing down anytime soon.

Tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft operate 522 data centers and are developing 411 more, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing data from Synergy Research Group. 

Patterson said construction workers are being paid more to work on building data centers in part due to condensed project timelines, which require complex coordination or machinery and skilled labor.

Projects that would usually take a couple of years to finish are being completed—in some instances—as quickly as six months, he said.

It is unclear how long the data center boom might last, but Patterson said it has in part convinced a growing number of Gen Z workers and recent college grads to choose construction trades as their career path.

“AI is creating a lot of job anxiety around knowledge workers,” Patterson said. “Construction work is, by definition, very hard to automate.”

“I think you’re starting to see a change in the labor market,” he added.



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Netflix cofounder started his career selling vacuums door-to-door before college—now, his $440 billion streaming giant is buying Warner Bros. and HBO

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December 5, 2025

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Reed Hastings may soon pull off one of the biggest deals in entertainment history. On Thursday, Netflix announced plans to acquire Warner Bros.—home to franchises like Dune, Harry Potter, and DC Universe, along with streamer HBO Max—in a total enterprise value deal of $83 billion. The move is set to cement Netflix as a media juggernaut that now rivals the legacy Hollywood giants it once disrupted.

It’s a remarkable trajectory for Netflix’s cofounder, Hastings—a self-made billionaire who found a love for business starting as a teenage door-to-door salesperson.

“I took a year off between high school and college and sold Rainbow vacuum cleaners door to door,” Hastings recalled to The New York Timesin 2006. “I started it as a summer job and found I liked it. As a sales pitch, I cleaned the carpet with the vacuum the customer had and then cleaned it with the Rainbow.”

That scrappy sales job was the first exposure to how to properly read customers—an instinct that would later shape Netflix’s user-obsessed culture. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1983, Hastings considered joining the Marine Corps but ultimately joined the Peace Corps, teaching math in Eswatini for two years. When he returned to the U.S., he obtained a master’s in computer science from Stanford and began his career in tech.

The idea for Netflix reportedly came a few years later in the late 1990s. After misplacing a VHS copy of Apollo 13 and getting hit with a $40 late fee at Blockbuster, Hastings began exploring a mail-order rental service. While it’s an origin story that has since been debated, it marked the start of a company that would reshape global entertainment.

Hastings stepped back as CEO in 2023 and now serves as Netflix’s chairman of the board. He has amassed a net worth of about $5.6 billion. He’d be even richer if he didn’t keep offloading his shares in the company and making record-breaking charitable donations.

Netflix’s secret for success: finding the right people

Hastings has long said that one of the biggest drivers of Netflix’s success is its focus on hiring and keeping exceptional talent.

“If you’re going to win the championship, you got to have incredible talent in every position. And that’s how we think about it,” he told CNBC in 2020. “We encourage people to focus on who of your employees would you fight hard to keep if they were going to another company? And those are the ones we want to hold onto.”

To secure top performers, Hastings said he was more than willing to pay for above-market rates. 

“With a fixed amount of money for salaries and a project I needed to complete, I had a choice: Hire 10 to 25 average engineers, or hire one ‘rock-star’ and pay significantly more than what I’d pay the others, if necessary,” Hastings wrote. “Over the years, I’ve come to see that the best programmer doesn’t add 10 times the value. He or she adds more like a 100 times.”

That mindset also guided Netflix’s leadership transition. When Hastings stepped back from the C-suite, the company didn’t pick a single successor—it picked two. Greg Peters joined Ted Sarandos as co-CEO in 2023.

“It’s a high-performance technique,” Hastings said, speaking about the co-CEO model. “It’s not for most situations and most companies. But if you’ve got two people that work really well together and complement and extend and trust each other, then it’s worth doing.”

Netflix’s stock has soared more than 80,000% since its IPO in 2002, adjusting for stock splits.

Netflix brought unlimited PTO into the mainstream

Netflix’s flexible workplace culture has also played a key role in its success, with Hastings often known for prioritizing time off to recharge. 

“I take a lot of vacation, and I’m hoping that certainly sets an example,” the former CEO said in 2015. “It is helpful. You often do your best thinking when you’re off hiking in some mountain or something. You get a different perspective on things.”

The company was one of the first to introduce unlimited PTO, a policy that many firms have since adopted. About 57% of retail investors have said it could improve overall company performance, according to a survey by Bloomberg. Critics have argued that such policies can backfire when employees feel guilty taking time off, but Hastings has maintained that freedom is core to Netflix’s identity. 

“We are fundamentally dedicated to employee freedom because that makes us more flexible, and we’ve had to adapt so much back from DVD by mail to leading streaming today,” Hastings said. “If you give employees freedom you’ve got a better chance at that success.”

Netflix’s other cofounder, Marc Randolph, embraced a similar philosophy of valuing work-life balance.

“For over thirty years, I had a hard cut-off on Tuesdays. Rain or shine, I left at exactly 5 p.m. and spent the evening with my best friend. We would go to a movie, have dinner, or just go window-shopping downtown together,” Randolph wrote in a LinkedIn post.

“Those Tuesday nights kept me sane. And they put the rest of my work in perspective.”



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‘This species is recovering’: Jaguar spotted in Arizona, far from Central and South American core

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December 5, 2025

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The spots gave it away. Just like a human fingerprint, the rosette pattern on each jaguar is unique so researchers knew they had a new animal on their hands after reviewing images captured by a remote camera in southern Arizona.

The University of Arizona Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center says it’s the fifth big cat over the last 15 years to be spotted in the area after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The animal was captured by the camera as it visited a watering hole in November, its distinctive spots setting it apart from previous sightings.

“We’re very excited. It signifies this edge population of jaguars continues to come here because they’re finding what they need,” Susan Malusa, director of the center’s jaguar and ocelot project, said during an interview Thursday.

The team is now working to collect scat samples to conduct genetic analysis and determine the sex and other details about the new jaguar, including what it likes to eat. The menu can include everything from skunks and javelina to small deer.

As an indicator species, Malusa said the continued presence of big cats in the region suggests a healthy landscape but that climate change and border barriers can threaten migratory corridors. She explained that warming temperatures and significant drought increase the urgency to ensure connectivity for jaguars with their historic range in Arizona.

More than 99% of the jaguar’s range is found in Central and South America, and the few male jaguars that have been spotted in the U.S. are believed to have dispersed from core populations in Mexico, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Officials have said that jaguar breeding in the U.S. has not been documented in more than 100 years.

Federal biologists have listed primary threats to the endangered species as habitat loss and fragmentation along with the animals being targeted for trophies and illegal trade.

The Fish and Wildlife Service issued a final rule in 2024, revising the habitat set aside for jaguars in response to a legal challenge. The area was reduced to about 1,000 square miles (2,590 square kilometers) in Arizona’s Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties.

Recent detection data supports findings that a jaguar appears every few years, Malusa said, with movement often tied to the availability of water. When food and water are plentiful, there’s less movement.

In the case of Jaguar #5, she said it was remarkable that the cat kept returning to the area over a 10-day period. Otherwise, she described the animals as quite elusive.

“That’s the message — that this species is recovering,” Malusa said. “We want people to know that and that we still do have a chance to get it right and keep these corridors open.”



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