{"id":1167665,"date":"2026-08-25T01:35:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T01:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1167665\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T01:35:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T01:35:15","slug":"on-the-beaton-track-auckland-university-navigators-student-raises-venture-capital-for-crime-fighting-startup-at-multimillion-valuation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1167665\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Beaton track: Auckland University \u2018Navigators\u2019 student raises venture capital for crime-fighting startup at multimillion valuation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The raise was supported by Antler, a venture and private equity firm based in Singapore, Beaton, Eliot Crowther (the Pushpay co-founder who also recently backed<\/a> Stirling, a robot accountant startup) and Jovan Pavlicevic, co-founder of fintech Emerge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Azonic has also named two advisory board members with high-powered connections in United States law enforcement: Brad Brekke, a founding director of the FBI\u2019s Office of the Private Sector and Michael Hurley, a former CIA senior manager who became an advisor to Palantir co-founder and CEO Alex Karp.<\/p>\n

Scott told the Herald he left Wait\u0101kere College at 14 amid Covid lockdowns, and never went back to high school. He got by developing games for the Roblox<\/a> platform.<\/p>\n

He studied for a Diploma in Business at Unitec in 2024, which became his entree to starting a BComm at Auckland University in 2025; where he has \u2013 whisper it quietly \u2013 now dropped out to focus on Azonic.<\/p>\n

Along the way, he formed a non-profit called the International Online Crime Coordination Center (IOC3), becoming a TV commentator on social media and gaming platform harm and a youth advisor to b416, the group advocating for an under-16 social media ban.<\/p>\n

\"ThomasThomas Holdom serves as Azonic’s chief technology officer, Caden Scott as the start-up’s chief executive. The pair are now hiring. Photo \/ Dean Purcell<\/p>\n

Scott calls Azonic \u201cthe operating system for online-crime investigation\u201d \u2013 an AI-driven system that can take care of basic tasks, information sharing and cross-jurisdictional demands.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does the slow groundwork, following the obvious leads and building the case out. The analyst picks up an investigation that is already most of the way to a conclusion, stays in charge of every call, and can check anything before acting on it,\u201d the startup\u2019s website says.<\/p>\n

The seed funding will be used for new hires and to prepare Azonic \u2013 only registered in March \u2013 for its commercial launch.<\/p>\n

ABOVE: Scott, second row at left, after last Wednesday\u2019s navigator\u2019s class featuring Sir Peter Beck (front centre).<\/p>\n

Scott says his startup is in talks with law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Tasman.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s to stop law enforcement agencies vibe-coding their own crime-fighting tools? <\/p>\n

Scott says they don\u2019t have the time or in-house skills.<\/p>\n

An agent with the FBI, or an analyst with Internal Affairs or an officer with the NZ police might have a backlog of dozens or even hundreds of online crime cases, Scott told the Herald.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe basically automate the entire process of intelligence collection for law enforcement agencies.\u201d <\/p>\n

Azonic was started because the fastest-growing criminal networks in the world have no headquarters to raid and no hierarchy to dismantle, he says.<\/p>\n

They run on the platforms millions use every day, organising child sexual exploitation, sextortion, fraud and violent extremism across dozens of countries at once, Scott says.<\/p>\n

\"PhotoPhoto \/ Dean Purcell<\/p>\n

When one account falls, three more appear, and reports of these crimes reaching agencies have multiplied year after year.<\/p>\n

The \u201cmaths\u201d has changed with AI, Scott says. Investigators need new tools to match the bad guys\u2019 speed and scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cI first met Caden as an inquisitive student in Business Navigators. I was blown away when he described his \u2018side hustle\u2019 fighting cybercrime and quickly realised his profound and burning passion for the space,\u201d Beaton said.<\/p>\n

Blackbird\u2019s Palmer said: \u201cOnline crime is scaling faster than the systems built to investigate it, and Azonic is tackling that gap with technology designed specifically for the realities of investigative work. <\/p>\n

\u201cCaden brings rare firsthand exposure to the problem through his work building IOC3, while Thomas brings deep experience building AI systems for complex organisations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the <\/b>Herald\u2019s<\/b> business team. He joined the <\/b>Herald<\/b> in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The raise was supported by Antler, a venture and private equity firm based in Singapore, Beaton, Eliot Crowther…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1167666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3094],"tags":[7747,10910,316925,316921,51,316927,13180,143119,120127,316923,187351,3187,3134,316929,4923,3576,32005,50018,316930,25045,316928,152902,316924,316922,254,22883,699,9466,65607,44780,1028,3321,15236,15065,5598,13039,26339,16,15,5178,316926,1328,16221,3118],"class_list":["post-1167665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-at","tag-auckland","tag-bcomm","tag-beaton","tag-business","tag-caden","tag-capital","tag-cofounders","tag-cohort","tag-crimefighting","tag-crimson","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-fangzhou","tag-first","tag-for","tag-guest","tag-jamie","tag-jiang","tag-last","tag-lectured","tag-lineup","tag-multimillion","tag-navigators","tag-on","tag-part","tag-plus","tag-programme","tag-raises","tag-scott","tag-speakers","tag-startup","tag-student","tag-students","tag-the","tag-through","tag-track","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-university","tag-universitys","tag-valuation","tag-venture","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1167665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1167666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1167665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1167665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1167665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}