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Online abuse, disinformation, fraud and other malicious content is on the rise and becoming increasingly complex to track. Today, a startup called ActiveFence, which has quietly built a technology platform to detect threats as they are formed and planned, to make it easier for trusted and security teams to fight them. on the platforms, comes out of the shadows to announce significant funding on the back of a wave of large organizations using its services.
The startup, headquartered in New York and Tel Aviv, has raised $ 100 million, funding it will use to continue to develop its tools and expand its customer base. To date, ActiveFence says its customers include businesses in social media, audio and video streaming, file sharing, games, marketplaces and other technologies. It has yet to disclose specific names, but says its tools collectively cover “billions” of users. Governments and brands are two other categories it targets as it continues to grow. It has been around since 2018 and is growing at around 100% per year.
The $ 100 million announced today actually covers two rounds: its most recent Series B led by CRV and Highland Europe, as well as a never-announced Series A led by Grove Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners. Vintage Investment Partners, Resolute Ventures and other anonymous funders also participated. He does not disclose the assessment, but I understand it is between $ 300 million and $ 400 million. (I’ll update this if we learn more.)
The growing presence of social media and online chats on other platforms has shed light on how these forums are being used by bad actors to spread malicious content. The particular approach of ActiveFence is a set of algorithms that exploit innovations in AI (natural language processing) and to map the relationships between conversations. It crawls all the obvious, less obvious, and harder-to-reach parts of the internet to detect the threads that are typically the source of most malicious content and campaigns (around 3 million sources in total) before they go. become more publicized issues. It is based both on the concept of big data analytics and on the understanding that the long tail of online content has value if it can be harnessed effectively.
“We take a fundamentally different approach to trust, security and content moderation,” Co-Founder and CEO Noam Schwartz said in an interview. “We proactively seek out the darkest corners of the web and the bad actors to understand the sources of malicious content. Our customers then know what is coming. They don’t need to wait for the damage or for internal research teams to identify the next scam or disinformation campaign. We work with some of the biggest companies in the world, but even small, super niche platforms come with risk. “
The information collected by ActiveFence is then aggregated into an API that its customers can then integrate with any other systems they use to track or mitigate traffic on their own platforms.
ActiveFence isn’t the only company developing technology to help platform operators, governments and brands get a better picture of what’s going on in the wider online world. Factmata has built algorithms to better understand and track feelings online; Primer (which also recently raised a big round) is also using NLP to help its clients track information online, along with its clients, including government organizations that have used its technology to track disinformation during election campaigns; Bolster (formerly known as RedMarlin) is another.
Some of the larger platforms have also become more proactive in bringing tracking technology and talent in-house: Facebook acquired Bloomsbury AI several years ago for this purpose; Twitter bought Fabula (and working on bigger efforts like Birdwatch to create better tools), and earlier this year Discord chose Sentropy, another online abuse tracker. In some cases, companies that compete more regularly for eyeballs and dollars are even teaming up to collaborate on efforts.
Indeed, it may well be that in the end there are multiple efforts and multiple companies doing a good job in this area, much like other corners of the security world, which might need more. with a hammer blow on the problems to solve them. In this particular case, the startup’s growth to date and its effectiveness in identifying warning signs is one of the reasons investors took an interest in ActiveFence.
“We are delighted to support ActiveFence in this important mission,” commented Izhar Armony, CRV’s principal investor, in a statement. “We believe they are ready for the next phase of growth and can maintain their leadership in the dynamic and rapidly growing market with confidence and security. “
“ActiveFence has become a clear leader in the developing category of online trust and security. This cycle will help the company accelerate the growth momentum we have seen over the past few years, ”said Dror Nahumi, general partner of Norwest Venture Partners, in a statement.
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