In 2017, while most of Silicon Valley was busy optimizing clicks and dopamine loops, Blackbird.AI took a quieter, sharper flight path. Founded by Wasim Khaled and Dr. Naushad UzZaman, two computer scientists who understood the next real threat would not crash servers but crash trust, the company set out to confront narrative attacks before the term showed up in board decks. Computational propaganda, info ops, synthetic amplification. Not theory. Not vibes. Real forces already bending markets, elections, and reputations in plain sight.
Blackbird.AI secured a $28M strategic investment, bringing total capital raised to $58M. The round was led by Ten Eleven Ventures and Dorilton Ventures, with personal backing from Dave DeWalt and Chris Young. When leaders who helped define modern cybersecurity start placing bets on narrative intelligence, that is not a headline grab. That is experienced pattern recognition doing its thing.
Blackbird.AI lives at the collision point of cybersecurity, communications, and intelligence because narrative attacks do not exploit code. They exploit belief. The Constellation platform tracks how stories emerge, who amplifies them, and when velocity turns into damage across 25+ languages, millions of data points, social platforms, dark web channels, news ecosystems, and private networks. Add RAV3N, the gen AI copilot purpose built for narrative intelligence, plus Compass for claim verification and deepfake detection, and you get a system designed to see influence before it becomes impact.
The numbers are loud without being flashy. 118% YoY ARR growth. 3X growth in enterprise logos. Global 2000 companies and nat sec orgs expanding deployments, not testing pilots. Gartner naming Blackbird.AI the company to beat in disinformation narrative intelligence. Forrester calling them a top threat intelligence company. This is what product market fit looks like when the market finally admits the problem is real.
Why this moment matters goes beyond capital. Narrative attacks now rank as the number one global risk per the World Economic Forum for the 2nd year running. Gen AI has driven the cost of influence ops toward zero while multiplying scale. Boards are waking up. Regulators are paying attention. Blackbird.AI did not pivot into this moment. They were built for it.
Wasim Khaled and Dr. Naushad UzZaman spent years assembling engineers, intel professionals, and operators across Rochester, Sacramento, San Francisco, and beyond, betting that trust would become the next attack surface. The market just validated the thesis. The interesting part is what happens next, when enterprises realize narrative risk is no longer a comms issue, but a balance sheet one.
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