Power to the CISO — CRV Partners With Outtake to Stop Imposters in Their Tracks
By Murat Bicer, Veronica Orellana and Mia Krishnamurthy
The AI era is undoubtedly exciting, but as widespread access to LLMs increases and the cost to create scams and impersonations across email, websites, phone and social media drops, AI is also poised to wreak havoc for cybersecurity teams around the world. That’s where Outtake comes in. Outtake is building an AI-powered automation platform for cybersecurity teams, starting with an agentic platform that fights off social engineering attacks across social media, websites and email — automatically searching, classifying and responding to threats. Today we’re proud to announce that CRV led Outtake’s $16.5 million Series A.
At CRV, we love getting involved early — often at the very beginning. Over our 54 year history, we’ve backed companies before they had revenue (like Cribl) or just after launch (we led DoorDash’s first round when it was only nine weeks old). Our approach is built on two core principles. First, we focus on founders. We build long term relationships with people who know their domains inside and out. Second, we dive deep into market research, understand the problem space and move fast as soon as the right opportunity takes shape.
The Outtake team checks both of those boxes in a big way. A large part of our excitement stems from the company’s founder and CEO, Alex Arjun Dhillon, and his incredible team (which consists of former founders and alums that hail from the likes of Meta, Notion and Palantir). As if having a triple major in molecular genetics, economics and public health from the University of California, Berkeley wasn’t enough, Alex also spent five years at Palantir working across product, business development and most recently on Palantir’s moonshot team where he executed 0-to-1 engineering bets directly for Palantir’s C-suite. What we love most about this team is their ambitious vision for the future. Today they’re tackling a massive problem, every year Meta alone receives at least 9.6 million notices of scams that need to be taken down, but Outtake has plans to protect every modern attack surface.
In its short 18 month existence the company has racked up big name customers like OpenAI, Pershing Square and Scicomm Media. Whether you’re a defense tech manufacturer or in consumer finance or the hospitality space, having impersonators erode your brand is bad for business. It can take companies weeks — or even months — to detect scams and navigate the legal maze required to take them down. The process is slow, expensive, and often incomplete, with teams overwhelmed by backlogs and scams slipping through the cracks. And the problem’s only getting worse: scammers are becoming more sophisticated, and the volume of attacks is multiplying.
That’s where Alex and his team come in. They’ve built an army of AI agents that work directly with platforms like X, Meta, LinkedIn, and more to handle the heavy lifting for impacted companies. These agents are self-learning — meaning each time they interact with a platform, they get smarter and more efficient at submitting exactly what’s needed to remove fake content. What once took weeks can now be resolved with Outtake in a matter of minutes.
We love partnering with builders who see problems — like scams and impersonations gaining traction — and feel compelled to solve them. When something causes stress for thousands or even millions of people, CRV backed founders don’t wait, they build. That’s why early-stage companies like Outtake are right in CRV’s wheelhouse. If you want to join a fast growing team tackling a massive problem in the heart of New York, Outtake is actively hiring for a number of critical roles. If you’re in the process of creating a startup tackling tough problems, reach out and get to know our team.
