Valent Raises £1.1 million round to scale its counter disinformation AI
Valent raises £1.1 million in investment to address threats emanating from the modern digital information environment, including disinformation.
Founded by former journalist and UK government specialist, Amil Khan; and ex-investment banker, Faisal Ansari, Valent’s AI, Ariadne, is already used by governments and financial institutions to proactively respond to informational threats
When early efforts to address this growing problem focused on fact checking, Valent saw the potential to reverse engineer what bad actors were doing online to provide opportunities for forewarning and response options.
Valent announced its £1.1 million funding round led by the Bayes Entrepreneurship Fund (”BEF”), alongside angel investors including Carsten Kraus, German Angel Investor of the year 2024. The investment will be used to build out its tech offering and scale its sales footprint.
London-based Valent was founded by Amil Khan, an ex Reuters correspondent and UK government information threats expert; and former HSBC investment banker, Faisal Ansari.
Valent’s AI, Ariadne, predicts, detects and responds by understanding how bad actors seek to manipulate information flows. Previously, organisations were forced to use marketing software that couldn’t differentiate human activity from bots; Ariadne spots patterns, learns and advises users how to respond.
Valent’s AI is now used by financial institutions concerned about stock market manipulation as well as governments and multilateral organisations worried about hostile state interference. The new investment will be used to fund product-led expansion into new market sectors.
CEO, Amil Khan, said: “Manipulation of the information environment is fundamental to the economic, political and security disruption going on around us. Having partners who understood the scale of the problem has been crucial. Now with BEF onboard, we have the support we need to go from understanding to solving - at scale.”
Helen Reynolds, MD and Investment Director of the Bayes Entrepreneurship Fund, said: “We are very pleased to have closed an investment into Valent. The team has shown it understands the problem and how to build a solution. Their Ariadne platform can support a wide range of governmental and commercial users facing ever more dangerous threats from the information environment. This is vital in today’s world.”