Alethea raises $20 million to combat disinformation campaigns
Alethea announced the close of a $20 million Series B funding round led by GV, with participation from Ballistic Ventures, who led Alethea’s Series A funding in 2022.
Also participating in the round is Hakluyt Capital, which invests alongside leading venture capital funds, targeting companies with high growth potential and international ambitions. This new investment signifies investor confidence in Alethea’s vision, technology capabilities, and the transformative impact the company will have on creating a more secure digital environment. The new funding brings Alethea’s total raised to $34 million.
“Companies’ biggest vulnerabilities today lie outside of their own systems, and the incoming threats we have to worry about are from those who are weaponizing information to break into and manipulate customer, investor, and stakeholder decisions,” said Lisa Kaplan, CEO of Alethea. “We built our Artemis product to move organizations from passive listening to active risk management. Since the launch, our customers have been able to use Artemis to detect and prebunk threats early, use our insights to inform mitigation responses, and better protect themselves from increasingly sophisticated adversaries.”
With its flagship product, Artemis, Alethea is redefining the early warning of security risks, detecting the first signs of cyber attacks, disinformation and misinformation narratives, and domestic and foreign influence operations earlier than previously possible. Using AI to detect and assess previously invisible risks on niche social media platforms, alternative forums and spaces, and known extremist communities, Artemis alerts communications, risk and intel, and security teams of malicious actors, vulnerable assets, and threats of physical violence.
Artemis analyzes billions of data points across a variety of disparate data sources and multiple languages to provide stakeholders with a comprehensive picture of the adversary and their tactics, techniques, and procedures.
The Series B investment will allow Alethea to scale sales and marketing efforts to bring its solutions to every organization or company with an online presence, grow the team to bring on new functions and expand existing functions, and enhance Artemis’ features and capabilities to provide tailored solutions that address evolving customer challenges.
“Alethea takes a novel, machine-learning driven approach to protect company brand reputations from the potential damages of disinformation campaigns and social media manipulation,” said Karim Faris, General Partner at GV.
“The rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence creates a more urgent need for Alethea’s technology, and the company continues to see strong adoption of its advanced analytics among major enterprises. We’re excited to support Lisa Kaplan and the entire team as they protect the bottom lines of Fortune 500 companies in the new AI-driven social information era,” added Faris.
“Disinformation is the new malware – yet a far more insidious threat to corporations, individuals and our open democracy,” said Ted Schlein, Co-founder and General Partner at Ballistic Ventures. “Our continued investment in Alethea underscores our confidence in their innovative approach to empowering a broad range of customers – from the Fortune 50 to the public sector – in combating disinformation and taking actions that safeguard our society’s digital future.”
Alethea was represented by outside counsel WilmerHale in the Series B transaction.
New Russian interference tactics in 2024 US presidential election
Alethea recently released a report, exclusively covered by The New York Times, on Russia’s new disinformation tactics to interfere in the US elections and global democracies.
Over the last several months, the Alethea team has been investigating and analyzing a network of accounts on X (formerly Twitter) and websites that we assess are seeking to divide Americans and amplify Russian propaganda – specifically counter-Ukraine messaging – ahead of the 2024 US Presidential Election.
Based on both the content shared and behaviors of these assets, Alethea’s report found that this network operates on behalf of Russia’s main military intelligence directorate, commonly known as the GRU.
This network is using a new amplification tactic, dubbed “Invisible Ink” by Alethea, including using the X platform in novel ways which hamper research efforts, supported by large scale automated amplification systems. The accounts in this network pose as conservative voters and amplify opposition to military aid funding to Ukraine.
Past Russian information operations targeted both sides of the political spectrum to foment existing societal divisions. In this network, we assess that the GRU targets more specific segments of the US electorate in advance of the 2024 presidential election to promote candidates and policies favorable to Russian military objectives in Ukraine.