The Antifraud Company is betting that AI and private-sector incentives can succeed where government has failed in clawing back billions in fraud.
A new startup with a bold pitch just came out of stealth with over $5 million in funding. The Antifraud Company is building what its founders call a “private-sector DOGE,” a reference to the government’s own short-lived Department of Government Efficiency. The goal is to use AI and investigative journalism to hunt down a slice of the estimated $500 billion lost to US government fraud each year.
The company, which has raised capital from Abstract Ventures, Browder Capital, and Dune Ventures, isn’t selling SaaS. Its business model is pure bounty hunting. The Antifraud Company finds fraud, reports it through official government whistleblower programs, and takes a cut—typically 10 to 30 percent—of whatever the government recovers. It’s a high-stakes, long-game approach, as payouts can take years to materialize.
The founding team brings a unique mix of activist and regulatory experience. Co-founder and President Alex Shieh, a 20-year-old sophomore at Brown, previously made waves by emailing the university’s entire payroll to ask what they do all day. CEO Sahaj Sharda is an antitrust author whose book, *The College Cartel*, spurred class-action lawsuits against Ivy League schools. And Chief Strategy Officer David Barclay is an alum of the Federal Trade Commission, where he worked on cases against pharmaceutical companies defrauding...
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