Executive Intelligence

Nuno Sebastião

Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO

Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Feedzai, the Portugal-rooted AI fraud-prevention unicorn serving global financial institutions.

In this profile

Quick Facts

  • Role Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO
  • Company Feedzai
  • Country Portugal
  • Industry AI in Finance
  • Founded 2011
  • Known For Feedzai represents the shift from point fraud tools toward unified financial-crime platforms, relevant for readers tracking…
  • Last Reviewed Jul 2026

Executive Summary

Nuno Sebastião is Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Feedzai, an AI platform focused on fraud prevention and financial crime risk for banks and payment companies. Sebastião is an ESA engineer who co-founded Feedzai in 2011 with Paulo Marques and Pedro Bizarro. He holds an MBA from London Business School, and Feedzai is described as a unicorn with roughly 800 employees.Feedzai's public materials frame the business around AI systems that help financial institutions fight fraud while protecting genuine customers. Global banks consolidate fraud vendors carefully because false positives destroy customer experience while false negatives create direct losses — making AI platform CEOs central to risk-technology strategy.This profile summarizes Nuno's publicly documented role and Feedzai's stated mission using official sources reviewed in July 2026. It does not invent education, employers, funding, quotes, or nationality beyond the verified facts listed for this entry.

Career Timeline

Verified company milestones linked to this executive’s organization.

  1. 2011 Company founded

    Feedzai was founded in 2011 per the company profile source on file.

    Source
  2. 2011 Development

    2011: Founded in Coimbra, Portugal, by Nuno Sebastiu00e3o, Pedro Bizarro, and Paulo Marques, as a spinout connected to the Carnegie Mellon Portugal program.

    Source
  3. 2014 Development

    2014: Expands into the United States, opening operations in San Mateo, California.

    Source
  4. Development

    Feedzai reaches a private-market valuation above $1 billion, cited by the Carnegie Mellon Portugal program as its second unicorn spinout.

    Source
  5. Development

    Feedzai introduces Fairband, a framework intended to help financial institutions test AI models for fairness.

    Source
  6. Product

    Feedzai unifies its fraud, identity, and AML products under a single RiskOps platform, positioning it against siloed, single-purpose fraud tools.

    Source

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Overview

Nuno Sebastião is Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Feedzai, an AI platform focused on fraud prevention and financial crime risk for banks and payment companies. Sebastião is an ESA engineer who co-founded Feedzai in 2011 with Paulo Marques and Pedro Bizarro. He holds an MBA from London Business School, and Feedzai is described as a unicorn with roughly 800 employees.

Feedzai’s public materials frame the business around AI systems that help financial institutions fight fraud while protecting genuine customers. Global banks consolidate fraud vendors carefully because false positives destroy customer experience while false negatives create direct losses — making AI platform CEOs central to risk-technology strategy.

This profile summarizes Nuno’s publicly documented role and Feedzai’s stated mission using official sources reviewed in July 2026. It does not invent education, employers, funding, quotes, or nationality beyond the verified facts listed for this entry.

Role

As Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Nuno is accountable for combined chairman and CEO leadership of Feedzai’s strategy, culture, and global expansion. As Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Sebastião is Feedzai’s principal public executive for AI fraud-prevention strategy. Company press on strengthening leadership in AI fraud prevention reinforces the firm’s continued investment in executive bench strength under his tenure.

In finance, the operating seat at Feedzai requires translating product capability into institutional trust. Holding both chair and CEO titles concentrates accountability for product roadmap and board governance in one founder.

Background

Sebastião’s verified background includes engineering work associated with ESA and an MBA from London Business School. He co-founded Feedzai in 2011 with Paulo Marques and Pedro Bizarro.

That background is relevant because technical depth plus formal business training is a common pattern among European enterprise AI founders selling into banks. Readers evaluating founder credibility in finance should weigh documented operating history more heavily than unverified biographical color.

Career

After ESA-linked engineering experience and an LBS MBA, Sebastião’s career center of gravity became Feedzai from the 2011 founding onward. Remaining Chairman and CEO through unicorn scale with roughly 800 employees is the defining continuity fact in his public record.

Career continuity in AI fraud prevention matters because institutional buyers often prefer vendors with stable executive ownership of risk, compliance, and roadmap commitments. Founder-CEOs who retain both chair and chief executive roles through unicorn scale are relatively uncommon and signal strong ownership of strategy.

Company Journey

Feedzai was co-founded in 2011 in Portugal’s technology ecosystem and grew into a global AI fraud-prevention vendor. Public materials describe unicorn status and a workforce on the order of 800 employees.

Feedzai’s journey under this leadership reflects a broader pattern in AI fraud prevention: European AI risk platforms expand by winning bank and payments deployments beyond their home market. For operators and investors tracking the category, the company’s public product thesis — an AI platform focused on fraud prevention and financial crime risk for banks and payment companies — is the clearest verified signal of strategic direction.

Leadership

Sebastião leads as Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO — a combined governance and operating mandate. Press releases about leadership strengthening in AI fraud prevention show the company continuing to scale its executive organization around that mandate.

Leadership effectiveness in this category is measured less by consumer brand awareness and more by bank adoption, model effectiveness, and ability to hire senior operators without losing founder direction. Fraud AI companies live or die on trust; a visible founder-chairman-CEO can be an asset when banks underwrite vendor risk.

Public Milestones

Co-founded Feedzai in 2011 with Paulo Marques and Pedro Bizarro. ESA engineering background; London Business School MBA; unicorn company with roughly 800 employees under Sebastião’s Chairman and CEO leadership.

These milestones are drawn from Feedzai’s official pages cited in this profile and establish a verifiable public record for Nuno’s role. No additional personal awards, funding rounds, or employment claims are added beyond those verified facts.

Why This Founder Matters

AI fraud prevention sits at the intersection of machine learning performance and regulated financial-services trust. Nuno matters in this landscape because he co-founded and still chairs and runs a Portugal-rooted unicorn that sells AI fraud prevention into global institutions.

Feedzai sits in a control-plane or platform position: Feedzai operates as risk infrastructure rather than a consumer-facing finance brand. As finance buyers demand lower fraud losses without unacceptable false-positive rates on genuine customers, founder and CEO profiles like this one help readers distinguish verified operating leadership from marketing narrative. Sebastião is a primary reference founder for European AI risk platforms that reached global bank relevance.

Sources

Primary sourcing for this profile:

Last Reviewed

This profile was last reviewed on July 11, 2026.

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Sources and references

This article draws on publicly available company information, official websites, filings, interviews, announcements, and other cited sources. Information may change over time.

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