AI-driven narrative and risk intelligence platform Blackbird.AI raises $20M in a Series B round

AI-driven narrative and risk intelligence startup Blackbird.AI has raised $20 million in a series B funding round led by cybersecurity investor Ten Eleven Ventures, with participation from existing investors Dorilton Capital, Generation Ventures StartFast Ventures and Trousdale Ventures.

Other investors include Paul Kurtz, chief cybersecurity advisor to Splunk and Richard Clarke, the first “cyber czar” for the U.S. Government.

The artificial intelligence-driven startup plans to use the raised funds to expand its footprint and grow its customer base across the region, with Singapore serving as the regional headquarters.

“Human perception has become the latest frontier in cyberattacks, manifesting as misinformation and narrative manipulation. This emerging threat is impacting a broad range of sectors and professionals, from strategic communicators and risk managers to information security teams," said Wasim Khaled, CEO and co-founder of Blackbird.AI.

"We aim to help organizations understand and address the potential threats posed by perception manipulation, which often fly under the radar, fostering an environment of trust, safety and integrity, while simultaneously providing them with significant strategic and competitive leverage."

Blackbird.AI helps organizations detect and respond to threats that cause reputational and financial harm.

The startup said that its platform brings together security and communications teams to uncover and track the deliberate manipulation of digital narratives, and the explosion of events in which information threats transmute into physical and cyber threats, financial losses and potentially company-killing events to businesses across brand reputation, ESG and supply chain.

“This investment significantly accelerates our ability to innovate in Generative AI. It will enable us to expedite our efforts in two critical areas: first, to identify and neutralize malicious propaganda campaigns generated by AI, and secondly, to create a state-of-the-art co-pilot assistant that will empower analysts and executives to make informed decisions swiftly, even in the face of unexpected events,” said Naushad UzZaman, CTO and co-founder of Blackbird.AI. “This funding fuels our journey to navigate and secure our increasingly complex information ecosystem.”

“Global organizations must act on deliberate and accidental disinformation and malicious messaging from humans or automated bots - or a hybrid of both,” said Dave Palmer, General Partner of Ten Eleven Ventures and former co-founder and chief product officer at Darktrace,who has joined Blackbird’s board of directors. “Online security measures like firewalls and cloud defenses may not be enough to ensure a safe internet. Blackbird offers superior security that goes beyond infrastructure and application security technologies. We are on a mission to serve and protect the global information ecosystem.”

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