US-based cybersecurity venture capital firm Ten Eleven leads funding, joining existing backers in CSIRO's Main Sequence and South Australian Venture Capital Fund

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA & ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, April 11, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Australian open-source intelligence (OSINT) software company, Fivecast, has closed its Series A funding round with almost US$20 million (AU$30m) raised to fuel its expansion and service contracts in key markets, including Five Eyes nations, amid a significant rise in the need for data and risk analytics among governments and corporations.

Born out of a collaboration between government agencies and leading research institutions, Fivecast provides OSINT technology powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to aid defense, intelligence, police, border security and corporations in keeping society safer. The software enables the targeted collection and risk analysis of publicly available information for specific use cases, such as identifying extremists, terrorists, drug trafficking and organized crime.

This round of funding is led by US-based cybersecurity venture capital firm, Ten Eleven, with additional investment from existing Australian backers, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization's (CSIRO) Main Sequence and the South Australian Venture Capital Fund, managed by Artesian.

Fivecast is leveraging 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 its UK office. 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 continuing recruitment of industry professionals, including tradecraft experts, developers, and sales and marketing personnel to its four offices, having recently achieved a milestone of more than 100 employees globally.

"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," said Dr Brenton Cooper, CEO and Co-Founder at Fivecast. "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."

This round of investment takes Fivecast's total funding received to AU$34m.

"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," said Alex Doll, Managing Partner at Ten Eleven Ventures. "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."

"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," said Martin Duursma, Partner at Main Sequence. "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."

Fivecast is an Australian Government Defense Industry Security Program (DISP) member, maintains UK Cyber Essentials certification, its software products are NIST 800-171 compliant, and its executive, tradecraft, and development teams hold security clearances for Australia, the US and UK. Fivecast is also the first Australian company to be awarded a Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) project with the US Department of Defense.

About Fivecast

The mission of Fivecast is to enable a safer world. As a leading provider of digital intelligence solutions, Fivecast helps public and private organizations explore masses of publicly available data, uncovering actionable insights which are critical to protecting global communities. Purpose-built to address the highest priority use cases in the national security, law enforcement, defense, corporate security and financial intelligence markets, Fivecast deploys advanced data collection and AI-enabled analytics to solve the most complex intelligence challenges.