Factmata Closes Funding Round, Adding Biz Stone and Craig Newmark to its Roster of Investors

LONDON, Feb. 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Anti-fake-news startup Factmata announced it has closed its seed funding round, bringing on the founder of Twitter, Biz Stone, and the founder of Craigslist, Craig Newmark, as early investors. Earlier in August, the startup announced other key investors such as Mark Cuban, Ross Mason, Mark Pincus and Sunil Paul.

The funding looks to support Factmata's mission of reducing misinformation on the web. Factmata is speaking with an array of publishers and advertisers, programmatic advertising companies such as AppNexus, Trustmetrics, Sovrn and Bucksense alongside large scale online communities and social networks also looking to combat fake news. Matt Harada, GM Data and Demand, at Sovrn:

"Sovrn is passionate about working with independent publishers of quality content," commented Matt Harada, GM Data and Demand at Sovrn. "To offer further quality metrics to our buyers, we have chosen to work with Factmata to help build new whitelists of inventory that are free of hate speech, politically extreme, and fake/spoof content. This is a new offering in the programmatic advertising market, and Factmata is a strong partner in this space. We are excited to be part of Factmata's journey to help indirect programmatic offer a cleaner, healthier environment for brands."

"It's inspiring that some of the leading internet pioneers have decided to back Factmata's vision and technology," said Factmata's Founder, Dhruv Ghulati. "This round allows us to focus on building out the ambitious architecture that will solve some major upcoming problems on the internet - reducing online misinformation, screening questionable content and providing more context on what is already out there."

"People increasingly depend on the web as their primary source of news, and the speed at which news gets shared is essentially real time," says Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone. "It's critical for societal progress to proactively address misinformation. Dhruv and Factmata are approaching the issue with exactly the right combination of big-thinking, focus, and cutting-edge science."

Factmata's technology keeps its focus solely on news rather than the extraneous features that many existing social media platforms carry, distracting from the original goal of eliminating misinformation. On the business side, the technology leverages machine learning algorithms for advertisers so they are aware of every detail of their chosen advertising platform, preventing inadvertent placement of low quality, fake, or hateful content on the web. Factmata's unique business model also does not look to monetise content through advertisements, but instead will use the data received from content to drive monetization across verticals that aim to analyse the news.

"I predict that in 5-10 years time, a new social news platform will capture market share that fully focuses on readers and their desire for high quality, credible information. This news platform will allow the user to engage in the news process, using a combination of humans and artificial intelligence working together to make the platform better," adds Ghulati. "Our hope is that Factmata will be a new way of monetising content on the web while at the same time giving complete protection to a user's experience, time, and trustworthiness of information."

About Factmata
FACTMATA is an advanced machine learning platform with a clear mission: to build a quality media ecosystem for people, advertisers, publishers and other businesses concerned with deceptive digital content. Established in 2017, and with backing secured from the most respected internet pioneers, we are tackling fake news by offering the only solution built on a crowd sourced community platform, leveraged by artificial intelligence. Contact us on business@factmata.com to find how your business can benefit and on beta@factmata.com to be considered for an invite to the beta platform.

Media Contact:
Paris de Reuck
Paris.dereuck@factmata.com
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