Ukrainian Startup LetsData Secures $1.6M to Combat Disinformation
A Ukrainian startup, LetsData, has secured $1.6 million in pre-seed funding to combat disinformation and synthetic identities. The funding round was led by SMOK Ventures, with participation from Wayra, Tilia Impact Ventures, 1991 Ventures, Google’s Ukraine Support Fund, Startup Wise Guys, Pavla Bobosikova, and Marty Krátký-Katz.
LetsData is developing a real-time security radar that protects corporations and governments from information operations and synthetic identities. The company’s AI model processes open-source data across over 100 million websites and social media outlets, covering more than 50 languages and regions. It analyzes text and video metadata from media across platforms like Telegram, YouTube, and TikTok, employing semantic understanding to group and link content across sources, identifying intent and coordination behind information operations.
The company has already achieved $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) after two years of bootstrapping. Its advanced platform offers a solution to an ever-pressing problem, detecting 80% more threats at their inception than conventional tools. For instance, while collaborating with a government client, the technology uncovered a botnet reposting sanctioned Russian news content at a staggering rate of 86 posts per second across social media and fake news sites. By identifying the malicious behavior, LetsData’s system provided an actionable threat report, allowing the client to respond immediately.
LetsData’s technology is used by the FCDO, UK Embassies, and the Armed Forces of NATO member states, as well as corporations across the US, UK, and Europe. The company intends to use the funds to further scale its technology and expand its presence in the United States and Europe to meet demand.
The company’s co-founders, Ksenia Iliuk and Andriy, bootstrapped their way to profitability without external funding. Their technology is already helping to stop information operations, and with a growing list of high-value clients, the investment will support them as they scale to meet the increasing demand for advanced InfoOps protection.
Existing tools to combat information operations, specifically manipulation and synthetic identities, cannot keep up with the complex, real-world challenges businesses face today. Threat actors are increasing in sophistication to find new ways of disrupting organizations and manipulating public opinion. LetsData’s proprietary technology effectively identifies and combats coordinated and widespread information operations.
The company’s approach bridges the gap by providing a security-first approach to InfoOps, enabling clients to act on alerts from day one of onboarding without the need for complex training or resource-intensive processes. LetsData aims to become the industry standard for InfoOps detection and disrupt the industry by delivering actionable intelligence that empowers organizations to respond swiftly and effectively.
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