ActiveFence Raises $100M to Combat Online Harm | TechCrunch

Combating Online Threats: ActiveFence Secures $100 Million Funding

The proliferation of malicious online content – encompassing abuse, disinformation, and fraudulent activities – is escalating in both volume and complexity. A company named ActiveFence has emerged from a period of quiet development to announce a substantial funding round, fueled by increased demand for its services from numerous large organizations.

Platform for Proactive Threat Detection

ActiveFence has engineered a technology platform designed to identify potential threats as they are being conceived and organized. This empowers trust and safety teams to more effectively address harmful content on various digital platforms.

Significant Investment and Expansion Plans

Co-headquartered in New York and Tel Aviv, the startup has secured $100 million in funding. These resources will be allocated to ongoing tool development and the expansion of its customer base.

Currently, ActiveFence serves clients across diverse sectors including social media, audio and video streaming, file sharing, gaming, and online marketplaces. While specific client names remain undisclosed, the company reports its tools collectively protect “billions” of users. The company is also actively targeting governments and brands for future partnerships.

Funding Details and Growth Trajectory

Founded in 2018, ActiveFence has experienced approximately 100% annual growth. The recently announced $100 million encompasses both a Series B funding round, spearheaded by CRV and Highland Europe, and a previously unannounced Series A round led by Grove Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners. Additional investors include Vintage Investment Partners and Resolute Ventures. The company’s valuation is reported to exceed $500 million.

Industry Recognition and Support

Lotan Levkowitz, general partner at Grove Ventures, stated, “We are very honored to be ActiveFence partners from the very earliest days of the company, and to be part of this important journey to make the internet a safer place and see their unprecedented success with the world’s leading internet platforms.”

Addressing the Rise of Malicious Content

The increasing prevalence of online platforms has amplified the visibility of malicious content dissemination. ActiveFence’s approach utilizes advanced algorithms, leveraging innovations in artificial intelligence (specifically natural language processing), to map relationships between online conversations.

The platform actively crawls both readily accessible and obscure corners of the internet – encompassing approximately 3 million sources – to detect early indicators of malicious content and coordinated campaigns before they gain widespread attention. This is achieved through a combination of big data analytics and the recognition of the value inherent in the long tail of online content.

Proactive Threat Identification

According to Noam Schwartz, co-founder and CEO, “We take a fundamentally different approach to trust, safety and content moderation. We are proactively searching the darkest corners of the web and looking for bad actors in order to understand the sources of malicious content. Our customers then know what’s coming.”

He further emphasized that ActiveFence’s services benefit not only large platforms but also smaller, niche communities that are also vulnerable to online risks.

Seamless Integration with Existing Systems

ActiveFence delivers its insights through an API, enabling customers to integrate the information into their existing systems for tracking and mitigating threats on their platforms.

Competitive Landscape

While ActiveFence is a key player, other companies are also developing solutions in this space. Factmata focuses on sentiment analysis, Primer utilizes NLP for information tracking (including support for government organizations during election campaigns), and Bolster (formerly RedMarlin) offers similar threat detection capabilities.

Industry Trends: In-House Development and Collaboration

Major platforms are increasingly investing in internal tracking technology and expertise. Examples include Facebook’s acquisition of Bloomsbury AI, Twitter’s acquisition of Fabula and Birdwatch initiative, and Discord’s acquisition of Sentropy. Notably, even competing companies are sometimes collaborating on shared safety initiatives.

A Multi-faceted Approach to Online Safety

The online safety landscape may ultimately require multiple solutions and companies working in concert, similar to the security industry as a whole. ActiveFence’s growth and demonstrated effectiveness in identifying early warning signs have attracted significant investor interest.

Investor Confidence and Future Outlook

Izhar Armony, a general partner at CRV, commented, “We are pleased to support ActiveFence in this important mission. We believe they are ready for the next phase of growth and that they can maintain leadership in the dynamic and fast-growing trust and safety market.”

Dror Nahumi, general partner at Norwest Venture Partners, added, “ActiveFence has emerged as a clear leader in the developing online trust and safety category. This round will help the company to accelerate the growth momentum we witnessed in the past few years.”