I’m joined here by Founders Jonathon Morgan & Ryan Fox at their Austin office
I’m super excited to announce that GGV Capital has led New Knowledge’s $11M Series A Financing. The company is also lucky to have Bilal Zuberi from Lux Capital join in the round. New Knowledge protects brands from the hazards of social media disinformation attacks. We’ve had a front row seat to New Knowledge’s incredible market debut, having participated in the company’s seed round alongside my friends Kelly Perdew of Moonshots and Semil Shah of Haystack, and have been incredibly impressed by the team, the company’s technology and the market dynamics.
Team. Jonathon Morgan, Founder & CEO, has been working on the problem of social media manipulation longer than just about anyone, commencing this focus while advising the state department and doing early machine learning research in this area. Jonathon’s co-founder, Ryan Fox, cut his teeth at the NSA, focusing on this problem as well. The founders are really purpose-trained to build New Knowledge. They’ve added industry heavyweights such as Renee DiResta as Director of Research. Renee has similarly been studying disinformation campaigns for years and is an industry luminary in this area.
Market. Its now well understood that adversarial state actors routinely manipulate social media to further causes, sow societal disruption and manufacture public outcry. While New Knowledge is helping governmental agencies identify these campaigns early, the team is primarily focused on protecting global enterprises whose brands are at risk of manipulation on social media. Whether for idealogical purposes or financial gain, bad actors of all types are increasingly seeking to damage brands. Forward thinking companies have awoken to this reality; New Knowledge is rapidly winning many of the world’s most recognizable companies as customers and momentum is building. New Knowledge spots manipulation campaigns at formation, enabling their customers to thwart attacks and proactively manage their impact.
Technology. The team has built AI-driven software that identifies the subtle early warning signs of manipulation campaigns. Its incredibly difficult to isolate disinformation from real information coming from real people on a scalable basis, but the team has utilized their experiences to build a comprehensive solution. New Knowledge’s customers have validated how valuable and predictive the company has been. The team has lots on the roadmap as well, ensuring they’ll remain the leader as others try to target this area.
While Facebook, Twitter and the Russians currently dominate the news cycle as it relates to social media manipulation, the truth is that this is already a big industry with many actors that is only going to get larger. New Knowledge has an incredible opportunity to capitalize on its leadership position, protecting the world’s leading companies from this scourge.