Alethea Closes $10M Series A Financing Led by Ballistic Ventures

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Nov 02, 2022, 17:08 ET

Investment to Advance Efforts to Detect and Mitigate Disinformation

WASHINGTON and SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Alethea, a technology company that detects and mitigates disinformation, misinformation, and social media manipulation, raised $10 million Series A, led by Ted Schlein and Kevin Mandia of Ballistic Ventures.

Proceeds will be invested into Alethea's machine learning SaaS platform, Artemis (in closed beta), by growing its engineering and data science teams. Currently in use by household name brands, Artemis conducts multichannel analysis across billions of datapoints to identify disinformation and social media manipulation at its start. As a result, communicators and risk and intelligence teams have the insights they need to protect their brands, bottom lines, and market cap.

"Disinformation is the next iteration of information security, and communicators and risk professionals are on the front lines of protecting their organizations from the information that exists outside their systems," said Lisa Kaplan, Founder and CEO of Alethea. "We've earned our record of alerting customers to the unknown unknowns to help avoid crises. Our incident response capabilities during high-stress periods, such as short-seller attacks, protects our customers. To provide this protection at scale, we created the system that didn't exist – Artemis – to provide tailored insights into the disinformation, misinformation, and social media manipulation ecosystem."

"We have found the right partners with Ted, Kevin, and the Ballistic network to deliver this capability at scale. With the ability to operate in free economies and democracies at stake, we look forward to rapidly scaling our support to customers as they navigate the new digital reality," continued Kaplan.

"Alethea is on the cutting edge of the fight against misinformation, one of the biggest threats to our modern society," said Ted Schlein, Chairman and General Partner of Ballistic Ventures. "We invested in the company because we believe Alethea's proven technology is critical to helping corporations promote access to accurate information and a more secure world."

Alethea was represented by outside counsel, WilmerHale, in the transaction.

About Ballistic Ventures

Ballistic Ventures is a venture capital firm solely dedicated to early-stage cybersecurity and cyber-related companies. The founding partners, Kevin Mandia, Barmak Meftah, Ted Schlein, Jake Seid, and Roger Thornton, have spent their entire careers defending against every cyber threat conceivable. Collectively, they have founded, funded, and operated over 90 successful cybersecurity firms, led over 10,000 security professionals globally, and have 40+ years of experience in venture capital. Learn more at ballisticventures.com.

About Alethea

Alethea is a technology company helping the Fortune 500, private companies and nonprofits protect themselves from harms stemming from disinformation. Leveraging its multi-channel machine learning platform, Artemis, Alethea detects disinformation narratives across the internet, enabling customers to proactively defend against this pervasive threat. With Artemis-powered early detection, Alethea customers can protect their reputations, key assets, physical safety and market value. The company was founded in 2019 and is woman-owned. Learn more at www.aletheagroup.com

SOURCE Alethea