Auckland startup Azonic has raised a NZ$1 million pre-seed round led by Blackbird to build an intelligence platform for police and agencies investigating online crime, with Antler and Crimson Education founder Jamie Beaton also investing, the company announced in August 2026.
Online offences such as child exploitation, sextortion, fraud and violent extremism routinely span many platforms and countries at once, while the reports, case files and intelligence behind them sit in separate systems that do not talk to each other. Azonic is betting that investigators will adopt software that pulls that material together, and it says users in New Zealand, Australia and the United States already do.
How the platform works
Azonic consolidates an agency’s data into a single platform and runs what it calls a virtual analyst on top. According to SecurityBrief Australia, the software pursues leads, links related cases and drafts investigative material, so a human analyst picks up a case that is already partly built.
“Online crime is scaling faster than the systems built to investigate it,” Blackbird’s James Palmer told SecurityBrief Australia.
The founders
Chief executive Caden Scott is 19 and studying commerce at the University of Auckland, according to Inside Government. He previously founded the International Online Crime Coordination Centre (IOC3), a non-profit that connects law enforcement with online platforms. Chief technology officer Thomas Holdom is a University of Auckland computer science graduate who has built AI systems for regulated organisations and built Azonic’s prototype.
The pair met in November, had a prototype running around Christmas and began raising capital in January, Inside Government reported. The round values the company at a reported NZ$6.1 million.
Investors and advisers
Alongside Blackbird and Antler, angel investors include Beaton, Pushpay co-founder Eliot Crowther and Emerge founder Jovan Pavlicevic. The advisory board includes Michael Hurley, formerly of the CIA and Palantir, and Brad Brekke, founding director of the FBI’s Office of the Private Sector.
Hurley pointed to the size of the opportunity in the US alone. “The United States alone has 19,000 law enforcement agencies,” he told SecurityBrief Australia.
Jack’s take
Government software is won on trust and access rather than features, and a company this young does not normally get either. Azonic has lined up serious names on its board within months of starting, which is the part I would watch more closely than the raise itself.