Investment

Blackbird lands $20M investment to expand its risk management tools

Published

1 year ago

June 15, 2023

Blackbird AI, a startup developing AI-powered software for risk intelligence, today announced that it raised $20 million in a Series B funding round led by Ten Eleven Ventures.

Bringing New York-based Blackbird’s total raised to $30 million, the tranche also had contributions from Dorilton Capital, Generation Ventures StartFast Ventures and Trousdale Ventures as well as angel investors.

“Blackbird was born out of a shared vision to leverage technology for the greater good of society,” co-founder and CEO Wasim Khaled told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Recognizing disinformation as one of the most alarming global threats of the 21st century, we were deeply concerned about the alarming ease with which even the most educated individuals were succumbing to the spread of online falsehoods and conspiracy theories.”

Blackbird, founded in 2017, claims that its first product — an algorithm to perform network analysis and adversarial cohort modeling — was used by the U.S. Department of Defense to analyze online propaganda and influence campaigns across high-profile websites. When the pandemic hit, forcing cuts in Blackbird’s Defense Department contract, Blackbird shifted its focus to the enterprise and rebuilt its backend systems to significantly broaden their scope, adding tools to ingest and normalize text, image, video and audio data from social media, news outlets, the dark web and elsewhere.

For organizations, Blackbird attempts to detect cyber “information” attacks directed against them, like mass deepfake campaigns, and equip IT teams with the capabilities to counter influence operations. Using Blackbird, users can delve into details like the content sharing patterns of specific actors or the narratives emerging in active discussions.

Blackbird provides heat map visualizations of how narratives — including toxic narratives (e.g., those involving hate speech) — flow across social media, flagging bot-like accounts and characterizing how high-profile people like influencers impact that flow. Blackbird claims it can discover key influencers within cohorts of people, mapping out how a narrative spreads over time.

“Blackbird enables leaders to swiftly counter misinformation, mitigate aggressive complaints and preempt backlash, positioning them as informed and proactive,” Khaled said. “Beyond threat mitigation, Blackbird also fosters business growth by keeping a finger on the industry pulse, tracking competitors and nurturing media relations. It measures the effectiveness of communication strategies, providing actionable insights for refinement.”

Of course, that’s promising a lot. We can’t speak to the accuracy of Blackbird’s platform, having not been afforded the chance to test it ourselves.

What’s undeniably true is that algorithms aren’t perfect. Machine learning algorithms still struggle to gain a holistic understanding of words in context. Compounding the challenge is the potential for bias to creep into the algorithms.

But even if it does perform as well as Khaled claims, Blackbird is far from alone in the reputation and risk intelligence space. Rivals include Graphika, Logically and Cyabra, which raised $5.6 million in October 2021.

Fortunately for Blackbird, it’s a large enough market to support a range of vendors. According to one estimate, the risk management software sector could be worth $86.53 billion by 2030 — up from $27.80 billion in 2021. A separate Deloitte report found that more than half of companies plan to address reputation risk by investing in technology such as analytical and brand monitoring tools

Blackbird wouldn’t disclose how many customers it has. But Khaled claims the growing threat from disinformation has been good for business.

“Disinformation, in our interconnected world, doesn’t just spread — it gallops, wreaking havoc on an organization’s reputation and operations,” he continued. “And let’s face it, the world isn’t becoming any less unpredictable. It’s in this very unpredictability that Blackbird finds its strength.”

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Investment

Tesla shares soar more than 14% as Trump win is seen boosting Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company

Published

3 days ago

November 6, 2024

Anne Joseph

NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Tesla soared Wednesday as investors bet that the electric vehicle maker and its CEO Elon Musk will benefit from Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Tesla stands to make significant gains under a Trump administration with the threat of diminished subsidies for alternative energy and electric vehicles doing the most harm to smaller competitors. Trump’s plans for extensive tariffs on Chinese imports make it less likely that Chinese EVs will be sold in bulk in the U.S. anytime soon.

“Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, in a note to investors. “This dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players.”

Tesla shares jumped 14.8% Wednesday while shares of rival electric vehicle makers tumbled. Nio, based in Shanghai, fell 5.3%. Shares of electric truck maker Rivian dropped 8.3% and Lucid Group fell 5.3%.

Tesla dominates sales of electric vehicles in the U.S, with 48.9% in market share through the middle of 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Subsidies for clean energy are part of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. It included tax credits for manufacturing, along with tax credits for consumers of electric vehicles.

Musk was one of Trump’s biggest donors, spending at least $119 million mobilizing Trump’s supporters to back the Republican nominee. He also pledged to give away $1 million a day to voters signing a petition for his political action committee.

In some ways, it has been a rocky year for Tesla, with sales and profit declining through the first half of the year. Profit did rise 17.3% in the third quarter.

The U.S. opened an investigation into the company’s “Full Self-Driving” system after reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian. The investigation covers roughly 2.4 million Teslas from the 2016 through 2024 model years.

And investors sent company shares tumbling last month after Tesla unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi at a Hollywood studio Thursday night, seeing not much progress at Tesla on autonomous vehicles while other companies have been making notable progress.

Tesla began selling the software, which is called “Full Self-Driving,” nine years ago. But there are doubts about its reliability.

The stock is now showing a 16.1% gain for the year after rising the past two days.

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Investment

S&P/TSX composite up more than 100 points, U.S. stock markets mixed

Published

3 weeks ago

October 16, 2024

Anne Joseph

TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 100 points in late-morning trading, helped by strength in base metal and utility stocks, while U.S. stock markets were mixed.

The S&P/TSX composite index was up 103.40 points at 24,542.48.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 192.31 points at 42,932.73. The S&P 500 index was up 7.14 points at 5,822.40, while the Nasdaq composite was down 9.03 points at 18,306.56.

The Canadian dollar traded for 72.61 cents US compared with 72.44 cents US on Tuesday.

The November crude oil contract was down 71 cents at US$69.87 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down eight cents at US$2.42 per mmBTU.

The December gold contract was up US$7.20 at US$2,686.10 an ounce and the December copper contract was up a penny at US$4.35 a pound.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD)

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Economy

S&P/TSX up more than 200 points, U.S. markets also higher

Published

4 weeks ago

October 11, 2024

Anne Joseph

TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 200 points in late-morning trading, while U.S. stock markets were also headed higher.

The S&P/TSX composite index was up 205.86 points at 24,508.12.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 336.62 points at 42,790.74. The S&P 500 index was up 34.19 points at 5,814.24, while the Nasdaq composite was up 60.27 points at 18.342.32.

The Canadian dollar traded for 72.61 cents US compared with 72.71 cents US on Thursday.

The November crude oil contract was down 15 cents at US$75.70 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down two cents at US$2.65 per mmBTU.

The December gold contract was down US$29.60 at US$2,668.90 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents at US$4.47 a pound.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 11, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD)

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