The Cabinet Office’s Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA), set up last year to help public bodies tackle fraud, will work with Quantexa to ‘find and prevent more fraud across the public sector’.

Under the deal, Quantexa will use artificial intelligence and analytics software to investigate shell companies, suspicious formations, insolvency scams and other routes used to attack public finances.

Founded in 2016, Quantexa’s platform is used globally, particularly in financial services. Its current partners include companies like Accenture, Deloitte, Google and KPMG.

The £4m contract will form part of a wider investment across the government to tackle fraud offences, with Quantexa’s technology currently capable of processing billions of data points at high speed to help identify suspicious activity.