Startup Gudea Uses AI to Help Organizations Spot Social Media Crises Early
US startup Gudea, which tracks how stories spread online, pitched an AI tool for early detection of reputation crises at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. It recently raised $7 million in seed funding.
Gudea, a startup that tracks how stories and rumors spread online, presented its artificial intelligence (AI) product on Wednesday at the Startup Battlefield competition at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 technology conference. The tool is meant to help organizations notice a brewing reputation crisis on social media before it grows. The company calls itself the “storm tracker for the internet.”
How it differs from existing tools
Traditional social listening platforms mainly count mentions, hashtags and impressions. Gudea says it shows who is driving a conversation, how information moves, how fast a story is gaining traction and where it may go next. Its AI analyzes behavior, relationships and information pathways across more than 500 mainstream and fringe websites and platforms, including X, Reddit and TikTok.
CEO and founder Keith Presley argues that large industries do not realize they can defend their reputations proactively. In his words, communications and marketing chiefs often rely on legacy tools that only report hashtag or impression counts.
Background
Gudea was founded in 2023 by Presley, Jonathan Sperber and James Thomin. The team previously worked at the George Washington Initiative, a nonprofit set up after the 2020 US election. It adapted methods the intelligence community has used abroad against networks tied to Al Qaeda and ISIS and applied them to domestic information campaigns. The team found that existing tools did not show how information actually moves among people, groups and platforms.
Customers and plans
The company has nearly 40 clients, including a Fortune 50 telecommunications company and a Fortune 50 retailer, public relations agencies and government agencies. Presley says inauthentic activity once appeared in about one in four cases the company examined, and now appears in roughly nine in ten. Next year Gudea plans to launch geolocation for narratives, down to the city-block level. Later, customers might also test an advertising campaign on the company's model before launching it.
Last week Gudea announced a $7 million seed round co-led by Mudita Venture Partners and Silicon Road Ventures. Total funding is now about $15 million.
