London startup Refute lands £5M to counter disinformation campaigns
Refute, a London-based cybersecurity startup focused on identifying and disrupting online disinformation operations, has raised £5 million in seed funding as demand grows for tools that can keep pace with bot networks, paid influencer campaigns, and increasingly sophisticated AI-assisted manipulation.
The round was led by Amadeus Capital Partners, which also participated in the company’s pre-seed financing. Additional backers include Playfair, Episode 1, Osney Capital, and the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF), which invested citing the company’s relevance to defence and national security applications.
Why disinformation is becoming a board-level risk
Disinformation has evolved from a political problem into a broader operational threat. Coordinated campaigns can target elections, but also corporate reputation, market confidence, regulatory relationships, and employee safety. The tactics range from synthetic content and coordinated posting to more subtle approaches such as seeding narratives through fringe outlets and amplifying them via automated accounts.
Refute argues that organisations need faster detection and more actionable response options than traditional monitoring tools provide. The startup says it aggregates public data streams to track how false narratives emerge and spread, then flags risks early and recommends tailored countermeasures.
Case study: suspicious TikTok activity during Romania’s election
In one example cited by the company, Refute analysed online activity during Romania’s recent election and identified 32,500 suspicious TikTok videos that it says promoted far-right messaging aimed at Romanian expatriates. While the company did not name specific accounts, it described the activity as consistent with coordinated amplification tactics used to shape political sentiment at scale.
Founders’ background: anti-fraud and anti-money laundering experience
Tom Garnett and Vlad Galuhave, the company’s founders, bring what they describe as more than 40 years of combined experience tackling money laundering and online fraud. They launched Refute in 2024 after concluding that disinformation was increasingly being used not only against public institutions, but also against private-sector organisations.
“We spent all our careers fighting criminal activity online and care deeply about elevating trust in the internet,” Garnett said. “The decision to develop the technology behind Refute came after seeing firsthand that disinformation targeting organisations was the next big threat vector, especially for commercial companies.”
How the platform positions itself in a crowded market
The disinformation-security market includes firms that map narratives and track influence operations. Refute points to competitors such as Graphika and NewsGuard as examples of platforms that can help monitor stories and assess credibility, but it claims differentiation in speed and in its ability to support more automated, practical response workflows.
“Refute’s AI-powered platform helps organisations spot and stop online manipulation before it takes hold,” Garnett said. “It picks up the early warning signs of disinformation campaigns, helps teams understand what’s really happening, and supports fast, practical responses.”
According to the company, its platform is already used by government and private-sector clients. It also highlighted work in the mining sector, saying it detected that 40% of monitored mining firms were being targeted by fake smear campaigns—an example it uses to underline how disinformation can be weaponised against industries where trust and reputation are critical.
“What sets us apart is the speed at which we can detect and the ability of our platform to proactively respond to threats,” Garnett added. “We bring together signals from across the online landscape into one clear, actionable view, so decision-makers can act with confidence, not guesswork.”
Diversity and a remote-first approach across Europe
As hybrid threats proliferate across Europe, Refute says it has deliberately built a remote-first workforce spanning multiple countries rather than concentrating hiring solely in the UK. The rationale, the founders argue, is that disinformation campaigns are culturally and linguistically nuanced, requiring teams that can interpret context across regions and languages.
“We see diversity as an important part of building our business, and something to keep track of as we continue to scale,” Garnett said. He added that the founders’ backgrounds—Galuhave originally from Romania and Garnett from the UK—reflect the cross-border focus of the company’s mission and product development.
What the funding will be used for
Refute said the £5 million seed round will support hiring—particularly engineers—along with improvements to detection algorithms, expansion of its response “kits,” and entry into additional European markets.
“Over the coming years, our key objective is to scale our operations by expanding our team and tapping into talent across new markets,” Garnett said. He also emphasised the need for continuous iteration as adversaries evolve their methods: “We fully expect to see new types of tactics emerging and also unique market dynamics that can help us tailor our technology.”
Outlook: an arms race between manipulation and defence
The seed round underscores a broader trend: disinformation defence is shifting from ad hoc communications work to a more systematic security function. As generative AI reduces the cost of producing persuasive content and as distribution networks become more automated, organisations are increasingly looking for platforms that can detect coordination early and provide response guidance that is operationally usable.
For Refute, the challenge will be proving that its approach can scale across countries, languages, and platforms—while maintaining independence and accuracy in a domain where false positives and overreach can be as damaging as the campaigns themselves.
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