Online fraud, online abuse and disinformation are all increasing and becoming more difficult to track. ActiveFence is a startup that has quietly created a platform to detect and track threats, so it's easier for safety and trust teams to fight them on platforms. Today's announcement comes on the heels of large corporations using its services.The startup is co-headquartered in New York City and Tel Aviv. It has raised $100 million to expand its customer base and continue to develop its tools. ActiveFence claims that it currently has customers in the areas of social media, audio and visual streaming, file sharing and gaming. It also says that its tools cover billions of people. ActiveFence is also expanding its reach to include brands and governments. It is a company that has existed since 2018 and continues to grow at about 100% per year.Today's $100 million announcement actually covers two rounds. The most recent Series B was led by CRV, Highland Europe and Norwest Venture Partners. Vintage Investment Partners, Resolute Ventures, and other unnamed backers participated as well. Although it is not disclosing the valuation, I believe it to be over $500 million.We are honored to have been ActiveFence partners since the beginning of the company and to see their incredible success with the top internet platforms. Lotan Levkowitz is general partner at Grove Ventures.Social media has become more popular than ever and other chatter sites have been used to spread malicious content. ActiveFence's unique approach uses a combination of algorithms to tap into AI (natural language processing), and to map the relationships between conversations. It scans the web for malicious content, as well as less-known and more difficult-to-reach areas of the internet. This allows it to identify chatter and potentially uncover campaigns and malware. It is based on big data analytics and the understanding that long-tail content online can have a value if it is tapped effectively.Noam Schwartz, co-founder and CEO of the company, stated in an interview that they have a completely different approach to content moderation, trust, safety, and safety. To find out the source of malicious content, we are proactive in searching the darkest corners and looking for bad actors. Then, our customers know exactly what's next. They don't have to wait for the damage to occur or for their internal research teams or to find the next disinformation or scam. Although we work with some of most prominent companies worldwide, even small, niche platforms can be at risk.ActiveFence then packages the insights it collects into an API, which its customers can use to feed into any other systems that they use to track and mitigate traffic on their platforms.ActiveFence isn't the only company that is developing technology to aid platform operators, governments, and brands. Factmata developed algorithms to understand and track sentiments online. Primer, which also recently raised a large round of funding, also uses NLP to help customers track online information. Bolster (formerly known as RedMarlin), is another.Some platforms are also more proactive in bringing in tracking technology and talent: Facebook bought Bloomsbury AI a few years ago; Twitter acquired Fabula (and is currently working on a larger effort like Birdwatch to improve tools); and Discord acquired Sentropy earlier this year, an online abuse tracker. Sometimes, companies that are more frequently in competition for dollars and eyeballs will even join forces to share their efforts.It is possible that there will be multiple efforts and multiple companies working in this area. This is similar to other areas of security which may need multiple hammers to solve problems. ActiveFence investors are interested in ActiveFence because of its growth and ability to identify early warning signs.Izhar Armony (CRV's lead investor) said that ActiveFence is an important mission and that we are happy to support it. We are confident that they will be able to continue their leadership role in the fast-growing trust and safety market.ActiveFence is a clear leader within the rapidly growing online safety and trust category. Dror Nahumi (general partner at Norwest Venture Partners), stated that this round will allow the company to continue the growth momentum experienced over the past few years.
