Gudea Uses AI to Track Online Narratives and Prevent Social Media Crises

A Storm Tracker for the Internet

Gudea describes itself as the "storm tracker for the internet," using artificial intelligence to help organizations spot trouble brewing online before it turns into a crisis. The company tracks how stories and rumors spread, aiming to show who is driving a conversation, how information is moving, how quickly a story is gaining traction and where it could be headed.

Unlike traditional social listening platforms, which tally mentions, hashtags and impressions, Gudea's AI analyzes behavior, relationships and the pathways through which information travels across more than 500 mainstream and fringe websites and platforms, including X, Reddit and TikTok.

Roots in Disinformation Research

Gudea was founded in 2023 by Keith Presley, Jonathan Sperber and James Thomin. The team began with the George Washington Initiative, a nonprofit established after the 2020 election that adapted strategies and tactics the intelligence community has used overseas to disrupt online networks tied to groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS, applying them to domestic information campaigns. The group found that existing tools did not show how information actually moved across people, groups and platforms, which became the opening for the startup.

Presley, the company's CEO, spent more than 15 years in political campaigns and defense, including building the infrastructure for Andrew Yang's presidential campaign. Sperber, the chief strategy officer, has a background in disinformation research, while CTO Thomin holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and has roughly two decades of experience in AI and machine learning.

Nearly 40 Clients and Rising Inauthentic Activity

Three years after its founding, Gudea has nearly 40 clients, including a Fortune 50 telecommunications company, a Fortune 50 retailer, one of the world's largest AI labs, one of the world's largest bands, public relations and crisis communications agencies, and government agencies. Pitching on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, the company argued that chief communications and marketing officers still rely on legacy tools that only report hashtags and impressions.

Presley said the rise of generative AI has made the need for the company's technology more urgent, as AI tools have lowered the cost and effort required to generate content and coordinate online campaigns. "When we first started in 2021, and then as a company in 2023, we maybe saw one out of four things we looked at have inauthentic activity around it," he said. "Now it's probably nine out of ten things that we look at have this inauthentic activity."

Geolocation Plans and New Funding

Looking ahead, Gudea plans to expand its ability to understand where narratives originate and how they spread. One major upcoming initiative is geolocation for narratives, slated for next year, which is intended to let users identify where conversations are happening down to the city-block level. The company also wants to give customers greater access to its tools, allowing an organization to run an advertising campaign through Gudea's AI model before launching it and get a better idea of whether the strategy is likely to produce a negative outcome.

Last week, Gudea announced that it had raised $7 million in seed funding in a round co-led by Mudita Venture Partners and Silicon Road Ventures, bringing the startup's total funding to approximately $15 million.

Sources: TechCrunch