Each day, conversations unfold throughout social media and web sites world wide. A seemingly insignificant submit—whether or not it entails AI-generated misinformation, hate speech, or a dangerous rumor—can rapidly snowball right into a a lot bigger public controversy.
Gudea, an organization that tracks how tales and rumors unfold on-line that describes itself because the “storm tracker for the web,” is utilizing AI to assist organizations spot hassle brewing on-line earlier than it turns right into a disaster.
In contrast to conventional social listening platforms, which solely observe metrics similar to mentions, hashtags, and impressions, Gudea goals to indicate organizations who’s driving a dialog, how info is transferring, how rapidly a narrative is gaining traction, and the place it might be headed. Fairly than merely tallying posts, its AI analyzes habits, relationships, and the pathways by which info travels throughout greater than 500 mainstream and fringe web sites and platforms, together with X, Reddit, and TikTok.
As a substitute of merely telling an organization that mentions are rising, Gudea goals to supply the context behind that progress so decision-makers can decide how and whether or not to reply.
Gudea pitched its mission Wednesday afternoon on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, the place the corporate made the case that corporations have to take a extra proactive strategy to defending their reputations.
“These large industries don’t perceive that there are issues they’ll do proactively to defend their popularity and their model,” CEO and founder Keith Presley mentioned. “Numerous the chief communications officers and chief media or advertising officers, they’re utilizing legacy instruments to strive to determine what’s occurring. These instruments have been solely ever designed to inform you the variety of hashtags or variety of impressions.”
Gudea was based in 2023 by Presley, Jonathan Sperber, and James Thomin. Presley brings greater than 15 years of expertise spanning political campaigns and protection, together with constructing the infrastructure for Andrew Yang’s presidential marketing campaign. Sperber, the corporate’s chief technique officer, has a background in disinformation analysis. Thomin, Gudea’s CTO, holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and has spent roughly 20 years working in AI and machine studying.
Presley known as the corporate’s path to changing into a startup uncommon.
“We’re a type of bizarre startups the place I by no means wished to do an organization,” he mentioned.
The staff started with the George Washington Initiative, a nonprofit established after the 2020 election. The group tailored methods and ways that the intelligence group has used abroad to disrupt on-line networks tied to teams similar to Al Qaeda and ISIS. It utilized them to home info campaigns.
The purpose was to establish the net environments the place info campaigns have been taking form and disrupt the pathways that allowed these narratives to succeed in wider audiences.
Nonetheless, the staff discovered that present instruments didn’t present how info was really transferring throughout individuals, teams and platforms. That hole turned the opening for Gudea.
Three years after its founding, Gudea has practically 40 shoppers. In response to Presley, its buyer base features a Fortune 50 telecommunications firm, a Fortune 50 retailer, “one of many world’s largest AI labs, one of many world’s largest bands,” public relations and disaster communications businesses, and authorities businesses.
With the rise of generative AI, Presley believes that the necessity for Gudea’s expertise has solely grown, as the corporate seems to be to increase its buyer base.
AI instruments have dramatically lowered the fee and energy required to generate content material and coordinate on-line campaigns. What as soon as required a bigger group can more and more be carried out by a single individual with a laptop computer and entry to the suitable software program.
“After we first began in 2021, after which as an organization in 2023, we perhaps noticed one out of 4 issues we checked out have inauthentic exercise round it,” Presley mentioned. “Now it’s most likely 9 out of ten issues that we take a look at have this inauthentic exercise.”
Wanting additional forward, Gudea plans to increase its potential to know the place narratives originate and the way they unfold. One main upcoming initiative is geolocation for narratives. Slated for subsequent 12 months, the expertise is meant to permit customers to establish the place conversations are occurring with far larger precision, right down to the city-block degree, Presley explains.
The corporate additionally needs to offer prospects larger entry to the instruments behind its evaluation. For instance, an organization might ultimately run an promoting marketing campaign by Gudea’s AI mannequin earlier than launching it and get a greater concept of whether or not the technique is more likely to produce a unfavourable consequence or not.
Final week, Gudea introduced that it had raised $7 million in seed funding in a spherical co-led by Mudita Enterprise Companions and Silicon Street Ventures. The funding brings the startup’s whole funding to roughly $15 million.
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