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As misinformation increases, especially with the explosion of artificial intelligence, companies are as vulnerable to its effects as individuals. Refute is a London-based startup that detects and responds to misinformation on behalf of these business entities. It has now raised £2.3 million ($2.9 million) in a pre-funding round led by British investors. Playfair and Episode 1.
There are a lot of factors fueling disinformation attacks, such as geopolitical instability and the use of generative AI to create misleading content.
The most sophisticated campaigns – often created by commercial competitors or sponsored by the state – focus on companies, their supply chains, and even their executives. The result can have a huge impact on reputation and money.
“We find that existing customers often use social media and media monitoring tools to try to understand the threat of misinformation,” Tom Garnett, co-founder and CEO of Refute, told TechCrunch. But these are passive tools generally designed for marketing purposes… In our experience, these signals are misleading, as noise levels are high and the source of the narrative is ambiguous. The result is that users are ill-equipped to understand—and thus process—the full threat picture.
This is clearly a growing field, as many startups have emerged to target this market. Rivals to refute include Alethea (which raised $30 million), Blackbird AI ($30.6 million), and Logically AI ($36.7 million).
However, “We provide both the detection and response part of the solution,” Garnett said. This is what sets us apart in the market, where other approaches focus primarily on detection.
Refute finds disinformation campaigns by detecting so-called “threat actor” behaviors of the adversary.
Garnett began his career in national security at Detica and BAE Systems, where he built large-scale data analytics solutions to investigate criminal activity with a focus on terrorist attacks.
He realized that similar core technology could be used to fight criminal activity in the commercial sector including cyber attacks and financial crime: “This led me to head up the government and cybersecurity business at Ripjar: selling, building and delivering solutions to technology companies, financial services, oil and gas and government clients.
His co-founder Vlad Gallo grew up in Romania in the 1980s and 1990s and experienced the threat of misinformation firsthand. “I started out building basic internet infrastructure and services in Romania and Central and Eastern Europe… Building everything from scratch during a time of emerging technology and limited legal frameworks meant we had to implement multi-layered defense strategies against threats targeting both platforms,” he told TechCrunch. “And the end.” -Users.”
Notion Capital and Amadeus Capital Partners also participated in the round. Refute has also received angel investment from investors Charlie Songhurst, Carlos Espinal, James Chappell and Alistair Patterson.
Andrew Sheffield, director of Playfair Capital, said in a statement: “The information landscape is changing: it is harder than ever to distinguish fact from fiction, and the cost of spreading misleading content continues to fall… Tom and Vlad have over forty years of experience in Data analysis, cybersecurity, countering terrorist attacks, identity management and money laundering.
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