From Building Minebots to Digging for Dirty Money

In 2003, Jamie King was trying to develop machines that could replace humans in dangerous nickel and iron-ore mines. Then a robotics PhD student at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, he used artificial intelligence to interpret the vast data streaming from the robots' sensors, which measured the distance of objects in every direction a thousand times a second. Although mining companies passed on the idea, King later discovered an unlikely new use for his minebot software: catching money launderers.

Banks collect huge data sets on the millions of transactions that move money in and out of their accounts. When university colleagues introduced King to a financial-software entrepreneur, he got a peek at such a pile of numbers and realized it looked "very much like a whole bunch of sensor readings." King co-founded Verafin in 2003 to sift bank data for patterns that could indicate fraud, drug trafficking, or terrorist financing.