Gudea, a startup that calls itself the “storm tracker for the internet,” uses AI to help organizations detect social media crises before they escalate. The company, which pitched this week at TechCrunch Disrupt, says its tools track how stories and rumors move across more than 500 mainstream and fringe platforms, including X, Reddit, and TikTok.
Unlike conventional social listening platforms that tally mentions, hashtags, and impressions, Gudea says it maps the behavior and relationships behind a conversation. The goal is to show who is driving a narrative, how quickly it is gaining traction, and where it might head, so communications teams can decide whether and how to respond.
Gudea was founded in 2023 by CEO Keith Presley, chief strategy officer Jonathan Sperber, and CTO James Thomin. The team previously worked with the George Washington Initiative, a nonprofit that applied intelligence-community methods used against groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS to domestic information campaigns. The company has raised $7 million in seed funding, bringing total funding to about $15 million, and says it has nearly 40 clients, including Fortune 50 companies, a major AI lab, and government agencies.
With generative AI lowering the cost of coordinated online campaigns, Presley says inauthentic activity now appears in about nine out of ten cases the company examines, up from roughly one in four in 2021. Gudea plans to add geolocation for narratives next year, allowing customers to pinpoint conversations down to the city-block level, and eventually let clients test advertising campaigns through its AI model before launch.