Blackbird is a company situated in New York. As it prepares to deploy the next iteration of its disinformation intelligence platform this fall, AI has raised $10 million in a Series around. Dorilton Ventures led the Series around, which also included new investors such as Generation Ventures, Trousdale Ventures, StartFast Ventures, and Richard Clarke, the former National Security Council’s principal counter-terrorism expert. NetX, an existing investor, also took part.
Blackbird plans to use the funds to grow its team and invest more in product development in order to meet demand in new and existing markets.
The 2017-founded firm delivers software as a service to brands and companies to manage risks linked to dangerous and manipulative data, emphasizing the idea of preserving corporate marketing’s “authenticity.” It’s using a variety of AI tools to solve the problem of filtering and analyzing emergent narratives from across the Internet in order to spot disinformation threats aimed at its clients.
Instead of digging into the difficult work of attribution, Blackbird AI is focused on using automation technologies to detect malicious/manipulative narratives. As a result, the service attempts to reveal new disinformation concerns for its clients. On that front, it’s mainly interested in what it refers to as “cohorts” (or “tribes”) of internet users who may be manipulating information collectively for a common interest or aim (think anti-vaxxers or “bitcoin bros”). Wasim Khaled, Blackbird’s CEO, and co-founder says the team has put in five years of R&D and “granular model development” to get the product to this point.
According to TechCrunch, “the way we think about the firm now in terms of technology is an AI-driven misinformation and narrative intelligence platform.” “This is essentially the result of five years of really in-depth, on-the-ground research and development that has included folks from the telecommunications industry to national security to enterprise and Fortune 500 companies, psychiatrists, and journalists.
“We’ve just been talking to stakeholders, people in the trenches, nonstop to figure out where their genuine problems are. How can you break those down into their separate elements using a scientific empirical method?
“We’ve just been talking to stakeholders, people in the trenches, nonstop to figure out where their problem sets are actually at. How can you divide those down into specific bits using a scientific empirical method? Automate some of it, and empower and equip the people who are trying to make judgments in the midst of all of the information chaos that we’re seeing.”
Although the first edition of Blackbird’s SaaS was published in November 2020, the company has yet to reveal customer numbers. According to Khaled, the platform’s second version will be released in November.
