Marinus Analytics

Marinus Analytics is a Pittsburgh-based artificial intelligence company that uses AI to disrupt human trafficking, child abuse, and cyber fraud. A spinout of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Robotics Institute, the company was cofounded in May 2014 by Emily Kennedy, Cara Jones, and Artur Dubrawski. Marinus Analytics's work has its origins in Kennedy's senior thesis while she was earning a bachelor's degree in Ethics, History, and Public Policy from CMU's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. The company has partnerships with Amazon Web Services, the NCMEC and the NCFTA and serves law enforcement agencies across the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Marinus Analytics offers information discovery services to detectives, social workers, and cyber fraud investigators through their flagship tool, Traffic Jam. Traffic Jam draws upon (1) AI technology to deploy graph analytics that unearth organized crime and (2) purpose-driven algorithms behind hidden exploitation online. The software, which Marinus claims is sixty times faster than manual search, is designed to greatly reduce cost, as well as the time detectives spend investigating and performing routine tasks. Traffic Jam also features geo-location mapping of brothels and massage parlors and can monitor trends for research planning. The software has over 2,500 registered law enforcement and non-profit users.

Marinus Analytics has raised nearly $1.8 million since its inception, with over $1.5 million coming from grants from the National Science Foundation. The company most recently raised a $65,000 convertible note from Idea Foundry.

On June 23, 2021, Marinus Analytics won third place and $500,000 in the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE competition, a global competition that awards companies using AI to address problems facing humanity. The company was one of three grand finalists in the competition and the sole finalist from the United States. Marinus announced that the prize money would be used to further invest in research and development and discover more victims and organized crime rings.

A description of Marinus Analytics