Exclusive: Gudea Secures $7M to Forecast Viral Online Narratives

Minneapolis-based startup Gudea has secured $7 million in seed funding to help businesses foresee which online narratives are bound to go viral and identify the drivers behind them, the company exclusively shared with Crunchbase News.

Co-founder and CEO Keith Presley stated that Mudita Venture Partners and Silicon Road Ventures co-led the financing round, bringing the startup’s overall funds raised to approximately $15 million since its founding in 2023.

The firm reports a 357% year-over-year revenue increase. Its clientele spans major artificial intelligence firms as well as companies in the retail, entertainment, and telecommunications sectors, though their identities remain undisclosed due to the sensitive nature of the work.

Gudea operates on the premise that monitoring mere hashtags and mentions provides companies with only a fraction of the full picture. Instead, the startup maps how information flows among platforms, groups, and individuals, subsequently forecasting how far a narrative will travel, when it will escalate, and when it will dissipate.

Describing the business, Presley calls Gudea the “storm tracker for the internet.”

“As a meteorologist uses patterns to predict the weather, we’re using patterns to predict information,” he explained during an interview, noting that the startup monitors more than 600 social media platforms.

From disrupting disinformation to tracking brands

The enterprise originated from the George Washington Initiative, a nonprofit that adapted intelligence community techniques—previously used to dismantle online ISIS and Al Qaeda networks—for domestic information campaigns. Initially, the team sought existing software capable of tracking how information travels, but concluded that traditional social listening tools fell short.

Co-founder and CTO James Thomin began developing technology to map those exact pathways. A pivotal moment occurred when the team analyzed the backlash surrounding the marketing partnership between Bud Light and actor Dylan Mulvaney. Presley observed that critics of the campaign utilized the identical information pathways that previously propagated COVID-related disinformation.

Reflecting on that realization, he noted that the team understood “that these patterns were repeating, and that there was a much broader use case.”

This technology spun off into a commercial entity in 2023. Its primary initial focus rests on reputational risk management, assisting major corporations in detecting potentially impactful stories long before they achieve widespread attention.

“We don’t need to know what we’re looking for to find it, so we can find all of those good or bad narratives before you know what keywords you should be searching for,” Presley stated.

Who’s driving the conversation?

One method Gudea uses involves evaluating whether accounts or users displaying unusual behavior are pushing online discussions. It additionally investigates how narratives transition from obscure online communities onto mainstream platforms.

As an illustration, the startup analyzed online claims linking Taylor Swift to Nazism surrounding an album release. 1 Georgia Paul, Gudea’s director of client experience, informed Crunchbase News that this analysis revealed the narrative was deliberately manipulated.

The enterprise notes its engagements have also encompassed instances of stock market manipulation and corporate espionage. More recently, the firm has studied how discussions surrounding data centers impact energy and AI businesses. Beyond tracking reputational threats, Paul indicated that the technology can pinpoint positive trends that companies might leverage.

Predicting what spreads next

To analyze behavior, Gudea leverages deep learning, which includes graph neural networks, alongside large language models to summarize its findings.

“Those behavior patterns are like fingerprints, and so our AI then recognizes those fingerprints, pulls it out, and then we use an LLM to summarize,” Presley remarked.

The company markets its software via offerings that include platform access, alerts, and automated reports. The latter option was created specifically for senior executives who typically prefer not to log directly into a software platform.

When identifying narrative intelligence competitors, Presley pointed to Alethea, Cyabra, and Blackbird, while emphasizing Gudea’s predictive capabilities as its core differentiator.

Gudea informs clients “how long till it goes viral, how many people will be impacted, and how long till it goes away,” he noted.

For the startup, the broader mission remains tied to its nonprofit foundations: enhancing the transparency of online information mechanisms.

“People are making real-world decisions off of what they see online, and not all of that information is authentic,” Presley stated.

With its newly secured capital, the startup intends to grow its team, engineer new features, and expand coverage across diverse regions, languages, and platforms. Gudea currently maintains about 25 employees and 39 customers.

Buddy Foster, an investor at Mudita Venture Partners, emphasized via email how AI is reshaping online storytelling dynamics.

“Damage to a brand is now starting in the fringe parts of the internet and builds momentum before it ever reaches a headline. It’s a big problem,” he wrote. “Gudea has built a solution that has the potential to own the market and know more than just the headlines. They can really see what is coming before it’s a problem.”

In Foster’s assessment, most competing market tools remain “reactive and surface-layer,” whereas Gudea takes a proactive stance.

“Gudea models how information moves across the internet and hundreds of platforms, so it can spot a problem before anyone knows to search for it,” he added. “Since it looks at behavior instead of content, its ability to be proactive gets better even as the internet gets more clouded.”

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Illustration: Dom Guzman

Frequently Asked Questions

How much funding has Gudea raised?

Gudea raised $7 million in a seed funding round co-led by Mudita Venture Partners and Silicon Road Ventures, bringing its total funding to approximately $15 million since its inception in 2023.

What is Gudea’s core technology used for?

Gudea maps information flow across hundreds of platforms using deep learning and graph neural networks to predict which online narratives will go viral, identify their drivers, and manage reputational risks.

Who are Gudea’s competitors in narrative intelligence?

According to CEO Keith Presley, Gudea’s competitors in the space include Blackbird, Cyabra, and Alethea.

How many platforms and employees does Gudea have?

The startup covers over 600 social media platforms, employs approximately 25 people, and serves 39 customers.

What are the origins of Gudea’s technology?

Gudea grew out of the George Washington Initiative, a nonprofit that adapted intelligence community techniques used to disrupt online Al Qaeda and ISIS networks for domestic information campaigns.