Blackbird.AI, a startup that provides artificial intelligence-powered narrative and risk intelligence to enterprises, said today it has closed on a $20 million round of funding, bringing its total amount raised to $30 million.

Today’s Series B round was led by Ten Eleven Ventures and saw participation from existing investors Dorilton Capital, Generation Ventures StartFast Ventures and Trousdale Ventures, and new backers such as Paul Kurtz, the chief cybersecurity adviser to Splunk Inc., and Richard Clarke, the U.S. government’s first-ever cyber czar.

BlackBird.AI, officially known as SocialTrendy Inc., has created a narrative and risk intelligence platform that helps companies understand and address potential threats to their business posed by misinformation and narrative manipulation.

The startup cites a 2019 estimate that puts the global cost of disinformation to businesses at around $78 billion a year. It adds that publicly traded companies lose about $39 billion a year because of disinformation-related stock market losses, and says these will likely grow even more with the rise of generative AI.

Blackbird.AI’s Constellation platform works by bringing communications and security teams together to uncover and track the deliberate manipulation of digital narratives and how they can evolve into physical and cyber threats, financial losses and damage to brands’ reputations. Companies can use it to detect harmful narratives, the potential risks they pose and the way in which they propagate online via text, images and memes across the internet, social media and elsewhere. Then, they can ask its generative AI-powered RAV3N Copilot for insights and recommendations on how to respond to misinformation that threatens to harm their brand.

According to Blackbird.AI, existing tools can’t detect and mitigate harmful content online because they’re unable to identify the nuanced indicators in content and the mechanisms that allow it to spread online.

Blackbird.AI co-founder and Chief Executive Wasim Khaled said human perception has become the latest frontier in cyberattacks, manifesting itself as misinformation and narrative manipulation. “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,” he said.

The company claims that it has enjoyed considerable success working with a number of government organizations throughout the ongoing Ukrainian conflict. It says its platform has also become a critical tool for the public relations and communications services firm Weber Shandwick.

Ten Eleven Ventures General Partner Dave Palmer said organizations need a way to spot and react to deliberate and accidental disinformation, which can come from both humans and malicious automated bots. “Blackbird offers superior security that goes beyond infrastructure and application security technologies,” he said.

Blackbird.AI said the funds from today’s round will help to scale its sales and marketing efforts so it can bring its platform to more customers, drive awareness in key industries, and enhance its Constellation Platform.

Image: Blackbird.ai