Strider Secures $55M to Fuel AI Growth and Global Expansion – Source: www.databreachtoday.com

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
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Next-Generation Technologies & Secure Development
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Threat Intelligence

Series C Funds to Fuel AI Research, Government Sector Investment and Global Growth

Michael Novinson (MichaelNovinson) •
September 13, 2024    

A strategic intelligence startup founded by a pair of brothers raised $55 million to accelerate R&D on artificial intelligence solutions, expand in the government sector and support international growth.

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Strider Technologies said the Series C investment will help the Salt Lake City-based company automate intelligence operations, further develop large language models, and create in-house AI analysts that can exponentially scale the firm’s intelligence services, said co-founder and COO Eric Levesque. He wants to do more with the government sector, which he said could benefit from Strider’s open-source intelligence.

“The use cases that we’re deploying to the market – around supply chain risk, talent management and talent analytics, and then also email security – these are all things that are big topics in the market,” Levesque told Information Security Media Group.

How AI, LLMs Help Strategic Intelligence Scale

Strider Technologies, founded in 2019, employs 158 people and raised $112 million in four rounds of outside funding. The company was started by brothers Greg and Eric Levesque – who are CEO and COO – and Mike Brown, who serves as chief data officer. Greg Levesque previously led the China practice for Crumpton Group LLC and was business advisory services manager for the US-China Business Council (see: Mastercard Buys Threat Intel Firm Recorded Future for $2.65B).

The $55 million in funding will help Strider develop AI-powered intelligence analysts trained on the company’s data and methodologies, which Eric Levesque said will help Strider scale operations exponentially. Levesque aims to build a team of AI analysts that can provide insights more efficiently and address the challenge around finding people with expertise on all the geopolitical actors and the needed linguistic capabilities.

“You get to a point here where, if you do this right, you have unlimited labor,” Levesque said. “This concept of an AI intelligence analyst allows us to essentially scale that team almost exponentially.”

Already, Levesque said Strider is using AI to automate intelligence processes and create more dynamic data interactions for customers. Specifically, the company is focused on automating data analysis and using large language models to help users interact with vast datasets effectively and better understand geopolitical risk and IP protection, which will make Strider’s platform more interactive and responsive.

“We’ve been developing our own methodologies in house – specific to geopolitical risk, IP protection and supply chain management – to be able to make more data available to customers with the large language model, and to make their experience interacting with the data and the intelligence more dynamic,” Levesque said.

Capturing Government Agencies, International Organizations

In the government sector, Levesque said Strider is focused on expanding its presence by providing open-source intelligence to help agencies better understand where nation-state risk exists within the commercial supply chain. The government’s increasing reliance on open-source military intelligence presents a massive opportunity for Strider, given the challenges with accessing and processing at scale.

“Government supply chains are commercial supply chains,” Levesque said. “They’re intertwined, so they need better intelligence on that and context on it. I would also say there’s a policymaking aspect to it. As the geopolitical environment heats up, it’s very likely we’re going to see more outbound investment screening requirements for universities to receive federal funds through research security programs.”

Outside of the United States, Levesque said Strider has set up offices in London and Japan to capitalize on rising awareness of the importance of economic security as it relates to national security. Levesque said Strider’s goal is to help governments and companies navigate this intertwined landscape by offering intelligence that is scalable, cost-effective and able to address multifaceted risks.

“We’re helping them map out and understand, ‘What is the economic environment that they’re operating in?'” Levesque said. “‘What are the relationships and connections that may pose a risk to their economic security?’ And we’re helping them scale that across industry and across government so there’s better harmony and better coordination between the two.”

Strider’s focus on open-source intelligence and specific areas like geopolitical risk, IP protection and vendor due diligence sets it apart from cyber intelligence firms and helps the company avoid direct competition. The primary alternate to Strider for customers is not a different third-party vendor but rather building strategic intelligence solutions in-house, according to Levesque.

“Honestly, to date, we’ve had no competitive RFPs with corporate customers,” Levesque said. “I would say they the choice for them is either do nothing, build in-house, or bring Strider in.”