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Alethea
For helping companies detect security risks from misinformation and disinformation campaigns
Misinformation is a huge threat to business. Two years ago, a fake Eli Lilly Twitter account announced the company would begin providing free insulin, leading to a 4% drop in share price—more than $13 billion in market cap value. Starbucks, Pepsi, Blackrock, and Kay Jewelers are just a few of the companies that have suffered from misinformation campaigns in recent years.
Lisa Kaplan, a fellow at George Mason University’s National Security Institute, founded Alethea in 2019 to combat disinformation and social media manipulation. The company’s flagship product is an AI-powered tool called Artemis that leverages advanced analytics and machine learning to detect misinformation threats in real time. The platform launched at the end of 2023, and last year it added the ability to detect threats across a wider array of sources, including niche social media platforms and extremist organizations.
Artemis scans the open web, analyzing billions of data points across multiple languages to detect early signs of cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and influence operations. The platform delivers its insights to company communications and security teams. A series of exclusive 2024 Alethea reports on Russian disinformation and influence operations prompted coverage in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Axios, and other prominent news outlets.
Given the nature of its service, Alethea does not reveal specific customers, but it says it added four Fortune 200 companies last year. In April 2024, the company completed a $20 million funding round led by Google Ventures. Since then, it has hired executives from major companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla, and over the last three years, it has sustained a better than 400% increase in annual recurring revenue.
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