Deepfake Detection Platform Reality Defender Secures $15 Million in Series A Funding Led by DCVC

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Oct 17, 2023, 08:22 ET

Groundbreaking AI-generated media detection platform closes round and adds Explainable AI, Real-Time Call Detection for clients.

NEW YORK, Oct. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Reality Defender, the premier deepfake and AI-generated media detection platform, today announced it has raised $15 Million in Series A funding. The round was led by DCVC, with participation from Comcast, ex/ante, Partnership Fund for New York City, Rackhouse Venture Capital, and Nat Friedman's AI Grant.

Reality Defender Founder Team (Left to Right): Ben Colman (Co-Founder, CEO), Ali Shahriyari (Co-Founder, CTO), Gaurav Bharaj (Co-Founder, Head of R&D)

Founded in 2021, Reality Defender provides enterprises, content platforms, and governments with bleeding-edge solutions to proactively detect deepfake and AI-generated content across audio, video, images, and text. In just two years, the company has partnered with enterprises, governments, and platforms to detect millions of deepfakes, deflect state-sponsored attackers, stop disinformation, and prevent advanced voice fraud in real time.

"Our incredible team built the only platform capable of stopping the most advanced threats of our time," said Ben Colman, CEO and Co-Founder of Reality Defender. "Our new partners at DCVC not only believe in our platform and our team, but share our vision for growing Reality Defender to fully address the innumerable AI-enabled problems of tomorrow. We're thrilled to work in lockstep with a group so equally passionate about our mission of stopping dangerous deepfakes and GenAI content for good."

"While Generative AI has already created massive productivity boosts for products and companies, it has also significantly reduced the cost for bad actors to create fake news, media, voice, and even fake organizations to target individuals, institutions, banks and whole societies," said DCVC General Partner Ali Tamaseb. "In the face of this dire threat—a whole new cybersecurity category—Reality Defender's best-in-class technology is leading the delivery of an absolute civil necessity: the ability to distinguish between what's real and what isn't."

In addition to fundraising, Reality Defender has launched Explainable AI on the platform's web application. Available today for all clients using Text Detection, Explainable AI enables clients to scan a document and see color coded paragraphs of AI-generated text. Explainable AI for audio, video, and image detection will continue to roll out on the Reality Defender platform in the coming months. The company has also launched real-time voice deepfake detection to select clients, allowing call centers and anti-fraud teams to detect the use of manipulated or fabricated media as it happens.

ABOUT REALITY DEFENDER
Reality Defender is a groundbreaking security platform offering comprehensive deepfake detection. A Y Combinator graduate, Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs alumni, and winner of SXSW Pitch 2023, Reality Defender's proactive deepfake and AI-generated content detection technology is developed by a leadership team with over 20 years of experience in applied research at the intersection of machine learning, data science, and cybersecurity. With models defending against present and future fabrication techniques, Reality Defender is the best way to detect and deter fraudulent text, audio, and visual content, partnering with government agencies and enterprise clients to enhance security and detect fraud. For more information, please visit www.realitydefender.com.

ABOUT DCVC
DCVC is deep tech venture capital. Over more than a dozen years, the firm has backed brilliant entrepreneurs using computational approaches to solve trillion-dollar problems in the real world across a broad set of industries, especially those that haven't seen material progress in decades. With billions of dollars of assets under management, DCVC builds long-term relationships with the founders it backs. The firm has been with many of its companies from their very start — and through to their recognition by the public markets as category-defining businesses. For more information, please visit www.dcvc.com.

CONTACT: Scott Steinhardt, [email protected]

SOURCE Reality Defender