Main Highlights
- With offices in both New York and Tel Aviv, ActiveFence has secured $100 million in investment, which it will use to continue developing its products and increasing its client base.
- The firm’s specialty is a collection of algorithms that leverage AI (natural language processing) advancements to map links between conversations.
- ActiveFence’s observations are then bundled up in an API, which its clients can then input into any other systems they employ to detect or reduce traffic on their own platforms.
Online abuse, misinformation, fraud, and other harmful content are on the rise and becoming increasingly difficult to detect. Today, a business named ActiveFence emerges from the shadows to announce considerable investment as a result of an increase in the number of major enterprises adopting its services. ActiveFence has discreetly developed a technology platform to detect risks as they emerge, with the goal of making it simpler for trust and safety teams to battle them on platforms.
The business, which has offices in both New York and Tel Aviv, has secured $100 million in investment, which it will use to continue developing its products and increasing its client base. ActiveFence claims that its customers include firms in social networking, audio and video streaming, file sharing, gaming, marketplaces, and other technologies. Governments and brands are two additional areas that it intends to target as it expands. It has been around since 2018 and is expanding at a rate of approximately 100% each year.
The $100 million announced today is divided into two rounds: Its most recent Series B was led by CRV and Highland Europe, and it never announced a Series A led by Grove Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners. Vintage Investment Partners, Resolute Ventures, and other unidentified investors also took part. It is not announcing the valuation, although I hear it is in excess of $500 million.
“We are very honored to have been ActiveFence partners since the company’s inception, and to be a part of this important journey to make the internet a safer place and witness their unprecedented success with the world’s leading internet platforms,” said Lotan Levkowitz, general partner at Grove Ventures, in a statement.
Technology Utilised by ActiveFence
ActiveFence’s specificity is a collection of algorithms that leverage AI (natural language processing) advancements to map links between conversations. It crawls all of the apparent, as well as less visible and more difficult-to-reach sections of the internet, to catch up on conversation, which is generally where a lot of harmful information and campaigns are created, some 3 million sources in total before they become higher-profile concerns. It is based on both the notion of big data analytics and the knowledge that the long tail of internet material has value if it can be properly assessed.
“We take a completely different approach to trust, safety, and content moderation,” co-founder and CEO Noam Schwartz said in an interview. “We are aggressively investigating the darkest regions of the web for rogue actors in order to understand the origins of harmful information. Our consumers will then be aware of what is to come. They do not have to wait for the harm to be done or for internal research teams to uncover the next fraud or misinformation effort. We deal with some of the world’s most significant firms, but even tiny, highly specialized platforms pose risks.”
ActiveFence’s observations are then bundled up in an API, which its clients can then input into any other systems they employ to detect or reduce traffic on their own platforms.
Some of the larger platforms have also become more proactive in bringing tracking technology and talent in-house: Facebook acquired Bloomsbury AI for this purpose several years ago; Twitter acquired Fabula (and is working on larger efforts like Birdwatch to build better tools); and Discord acquired Sentropy, another online abuse tracker, earlier this year. In some situations, firms that frequently fight for attention and cash are banding together to collaborate on projects.
Initiatives by ActiveFence
Indeed, it is possible that, in the end, there will be numerous initiatives and businesses doing outstanding work in this area, similar to how other areas of security may require more than one hammer thrown at issues to break them. In this example, one reason investors are interested in ActiveFence is the startup’s rapid growth so far, as well as its ability in detecting early warning indications.
In a statement, Izhar Armony, a general partner at CRV, said, “We are happy to assist ActiveFence in this vital objective.” “We believe they are ready for the next stage of expansion and will be able to maintain leadership in the dynamic and rapidly increasing trust and safety market.”
“ActiveFence has emerged as a clear leader in the emerging field of online trust and safety. This investment will assist the firm in accelerating the growing momentum we have seen in recent years,” said Dror Nahumi, general partner at Norwest Venture Partners, in a statement.
