Startup highlight: Interview with Sam Dabiri, CEO at Azursafe
Can you introduce Azursafe, its industry, mission and values?
The blockchain sector has been growing steadily for several years, bringing both new opportunities and complex challenges, including stricter regulations in Europe and beyond. In this evolving landscape, AzurSafe was founded with a clear mission to support blockchain companies, financial institutions, fraud victims, analytics partners, security researchers, and law enforcement agencies in one shared goal: Making Blockchain Safer.
We develop and offer transaction analysis and monitoring solutions, to identify malicious activity using intelligent and innovative technologies.
Quickly gaining the support of the French government and several key partners, AzurSafe has established itself as a trusted player in the sector, earning recognition from private and public financial institutions for its innovative solutions which bring a real added value both in operational and regulatory terms.
What were specific challenges you faced before joining OVHcloud’s Blockchain Accelerator?
Deploying such complex and advanced solutions requires significant logistics in all areas, whether technical or business. Like any ambitious start-up, AzurSafe needs to respond to these challenges as part of its development.
On the technical side, we have to manage and orchestrate dozens of services, from massive data flows to the various characteristics that define each blockchain, then process and analyze all of this while offering a near-instantaneous service, because on the blockchain, every second counts when it comes to preventing fraud.
Why did you decide to explore cloud solutions to overcome these obstacles?
As our solution progressed, we realized that we needed to manage more and more features, then orient the infrastructure so it’s modular as we went along, while maintaining high availability, security standards, and data management without blowing our budget, inevitably linked to our business challenges.
After using other cloud services, we immediately understood the relevance of OVHcloud’s offering. What’s more, we offer a sovereign solution to those who want it (SecNumCloud), so the choice was easy.
How did OVHcloud and the Startup Program help you overcome these challenges?
After two years of intense R&D, we were reassured after benchmarking against the current state of the art and quickly realized that our technology had the same technical capabilities, and even better ones. But that wasn’t all it took to deploy a solution of this kind on the market.
We needed to dig deeper and better understand our environment and the distribution of our solutions and technologies in an ecosystem that was already formed with established players requiring equally established solutions. Participating in inspiring industry exchanges and receiving support throughout our deployment greatly contributed to our success.
Which OVHcloud services or features do you use, and how do they stand out from other solutions?
For our part, we use almost all (or nearly all) Public Cloud services, which stand out from other solutions thanks to their simplicity, performance, and competitive pricing.
How has OVHcloud’s support helped you evolve your infrastructure to meet the demands of your business?
Their support has been very useful in various cases, thanks to the organization of workshops, mentoring, and infrastructure support.
What tangible results have you achieved since collaborating with OVHcloud? How have these results helped to accelerate your growth or improve your product/service offering?
Not to mention the ease of use, which saves time, the costs are at least half those of well-known American providers.
How have these results helped to accelerate your growth or improve your product/service offering?
The program has enabled us to better understand our environment and the industry in which we operate, by combining technical and business support.
Future Vision: What are your ambitions for the future of your startup, and how do you see it evolving within the cloud ecosystem?
Current technologies, as well as the various legal and illegal activities involving blockchain, are still in their infancy. It is easy to predict that they will evolve in the coming years, creating new opportunities but also complex challenges. We do not operate directly on the blockchain, but we must monitor it and evolve with it. Our infrastructure and services must be resilient, and the cloud remains the best alternative for our customers who do not want on-premise software.
What future challenges do you foresee, and how do you see the cloud playing a role in solving them?
The volume of data and the number of protocols and services built on decentralized technologies continue to grow rapidly. Yet, they still rely on essential solutions such as RPC nodes, interface hosting, and advanced platforms like ours to operate safely.
The risks are real and can affect everyone. Security is no longer an option in today’s digital age, and increasingly secure solutions will be necessary. The cloud is an excellent candidate for the coming years, provided it is used correctly.
What advice would you give to other growth-stage startups considering the cloud or joining a support program?
Go for it, you have so much to gain!
Conclusions
AzurSafe has recently reached a new milestone, surpassing $90 billion in transaction value monitored across more than 30 blockchains, highlighting emerging fraud trends and providing real-time insights using advanced AI and ML technologies that demonstrate unrivalled accuracy.
The precision of our fraud detection tools has been approved, audited, battle-tested and endorsed by experts in the financial and investigative industries. But this is only the beginning, and we are preparing huge projects that will completely redefine the landscape on an international scale.
We are surpassing ourselves at every stage to create a more secure blockchain and we would like to thank OVHcloud, our webhost for several years, for this great opportunity and for joining us in revolutionising this industry. We invite anyone who wants to contribute to join us as well.
If you’re a startup looking to transform your business, we encourage you to join the OVHcloud Startup Program or contact OVHcloud to discover how our solutions can support your journey!
Philip has been working with startups for the last 20 years within the VC, technology transfer and business incubation industries. He has accreditation as a mentor and business coach with Mentors and Business Coaches International and currently leads the OVHcloud Startup Program globally. OVHcloud is a leading European hyperscaler and pure-play cloud provider.