Fivecast – an Australia-based open-source intelligence (OSINT) software company – announced it has closed a Series A funding round with nearly US$20 million (AU$30 million) raised to fuel its expansion and service contracts in key markets, including Five Eyes nations in an environment where there is a significant rise in the need for data and risk analytics among governments and corporations.
Launched out of a collaboration between government agencies and leading research institutions, Fivecast built OSINT technology powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to aid defense, intelligence, police, border security, and corporations. And the software enables the targeted collection and risk analysis of publicly available information for specific use cases like identifying extremists, terrorists, drug trafficking, and organized crime.
This funding round was led by Ten Eleven with additional investment from existing Australia-based backers the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization’s (CSIRO) Main Sequence and the South Australian Venture Capital Fund, managed by Artesian.
Fivecast is utilizing the new funding to build out its product portfolio and drive growth in the Five Eyes community following strong momentum in Australia, a surge in demand in the US, and the establishment of a UK office. Plus it is also targeting the Asia Pacific region and Europe, and is adding further capabilities in adjacent use cases such as corporate security and financial intelligence.
The company is also recruiting more industry professionals, including tradecraft experts, developers, and sales and marketing personnel to its four offices, having recently achieved a milestone of over 100 employees globally.
This funding round brings Fivecast’s total received to AU$34 million
KEY QUOTES:
“An increasingly complex and growing threat landscape combined with the sheer volume of data available online make it extremely difficult for intelligence personnel to collect, filter and analyze data in a timely way. Our platform enables customers to fight the proliferation of threats, pierce through sophisticated online landscapes, and speed up investigations to protect global communities and organizations.
“Since our founding in 2017, we have enabled government agencies and corporations to identify threats, reduce risks and mitigate incidents across a diverse range of use cases – from divisive US politics influencing violent extremism and China’s influence in the South Pacific, through to crypto scams and money laundering. This Series A funding ensures we can continue building advanced capabilities to support our customers’ targeted objectives and add headcount to service markets across the globe – particularly in Australia, the US, and the UK.”
- Brenton Cooper, CEO and Co-Founder at Fivecast
“We see OSINT as a large and emerging sector driven by the explosion of publicly available content, now growing ever-larger via the newly accessible AI-generated multimedia content platforms. Governments, law enforcement, and other organizations need a faster and easier way to collect and analyze this open-source data. Fivecast’s advanced collection methods and AI-supported analysis tools bypass current manual data analysis processes to meet this important need. Notably, this is our second investment in Australia, a country we know has tremendous entrepreneurial and technical talent. We will make additional investments in Australia in the years ahead and look forward to helping bridge the country’s incredible tech to other markets.”
- Alex Doll, Managing Partner at Ten Eleven Ventures
“Deep tech is boundless in its ability to create safer societies through research, data and advanced capabilities that tackle among the most pressing challenges we face. Fivecast incorporates these principles to address the growing spectrum of global threats by deciphering almost endless troves of publicly available data, and applying AI to help uncover insights essential to protecting communities and organizations. It’s yet another example of Australian deep-tech innovation making a positive, large-scale impact on the world.”
- Martin Duursma, Partner at Main Sequence
