Washington, D.C.-based Pyrra Technologies, which has developed AI technology to identify threats to individuals and organizations from rightwing social media platforms, has closed on a $2.3 million seed round led by New York-based Ducera Investments. Other investors included New York’s Andav Capital and Lake Oswego, Ore.-based Growth Science Ventures.
Pyrra was launched in late 2021 after being developed as a research and development project of the New York NGO Human Rights First.
“We started out with the mission to make the internet and the world a safer place, by monitoring threats emanating from alt-social media, an environment where users post concerning content without consequence,” Dr. Welton Chang, one of three co-founders of Pyrra, and founder of Human Rights First’s innovation lab, wrote on LinkedIn. “Today we got more resources to continue our mission.”
Data Scientist’s Backing
Pyrra’s tools allow their users to understand and prevent online extremism and abuses in new and important ways, said Human Rights First CEO Mike Green. “We’re proud that Human Rights First’s Innovation Lab fostered the development of a technology-driven tool that is meeting the challenge of online extremism,” Green said. Protection from violent threats, hateful language, and disinformation are critical to human rights, he added.
Ducera adviser Thomas Thurston, who uses data science to evaluate business plans and predict the success of startups, said AI is the only answer to tackle online abuse at scale, since the “sheer volume of data makes threat detection inordinately difficult,” even for the largest companies.
“There has hate speech in the dark corners of the Internet. Most of it stays online, but it’s increasingly leading to harm and violence in the real world,” Thurston said. Pyrra’s technology not only helps individuals, organizations, and businesses identify threats today, but also can aid many underserved markets in the future, he said. Thurston called Pyrra “an exciting and disruptive company” that is “valuable for a broad array of stakeholders.”
Pyrra was co-founded by the trio of Chang, who served the US Army and the Department of Defense, besides working for several think tanks, Eric Curwin, who also served the US Army, and former Airbus executive Rebecca Jones. Curwin, who has also worked for Human Rights First, serves as Perra’s chief technology officer, while Jones is the chief operating officer. Besides Human Rights First, Chang and Curwin also worked together at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
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Nearly a Score of Users
In a little over a year, Pyrra has developed two products. Discover is a kind of do-it-yourself toolkit for individuals and organisations to monitor alt-social media, such as Mastodon, 4Chan and Truth Social, for threat. Its other product, called Protect, is a full-featured one in which Pyrra will monitor threats across over 20 platforms and issue alerts. Nearly a score of organizations, including security teams at some Fortune 500 companies, media entities, NGOs and academic researchers are early users of Pyrra’s products.
Perhaps the strongest use cases for Pyrra emerged this year. First, Anheuser-Busch, maker of Budweiser beer, faced a backlash after partnering with transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney in April. The following month, Target, the country’s seventh-largest retailer, was hit by a sustained campaign after it contracted a British transgender designer to develop a line of pro-LGBTQ+ clothing and accessories to promote Pride Month. The campaign accusing Target of “promoting narcotics, violence, demonic practices, and gender dysphoria,” and called for a boycott. It was so severe that the retailer was forced to remove some items from exhibition and also hide its Pride Month program at the back of its stores.
Clearly, the impact of the alt-social media campaign “led to physical, reputational, and financial fallout,” Pyrra said in a case study on the two incidents, published on LinkedIn. It “illustrates the importance of monitoring messaging campaigns on not just mainstream social media but those on alternative forums, as well,” Pyrra concluded.
