Disinformation has become a key tactic, leveraging bot networks, paid influencers, and advanced AI to target governments, businesses, and elections. The London startup uses advanced AI to detect these campaigns early and provide practical ways to combat them.
During the recent Romanian elections, Refute found 32,500 suspicious TikTok videos pushing far-right messages on foreigners.
Refute has just raised £5m in seed funding led by Amadeus Capital Partners, who also participated in the pre-seed round. Other investors include Playfair, Episode 1, Osney Capital and the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund, which invested in Left because of its defense technology expertise.
respond faster than the enemy
Tom Garnett and Vlad Galu have over 40 years of combined experience fighting money laundering and online fraud. They started Refute in 2024 after realizing that these threats were increasingly directed at businesses and governments.
garnet says TFN“We have spent our entire careers fighting online criminal activity and care deeply about making the Internet more trustworthy. The decision to develop the technology behind Refute was made after seeing firsthand that targeted disinformation is the next big threat vector, especially for commercial enterprises.”
Refute integrates public data streams to track the spread of false information, quickly alerting you to risks and providing customized countermeasures. Top government and private clients are already using the platform, including one that captured 40% of monitored mining companies targeted by fake smears.
Garnett said, “Refute’s AI-powered platform helps organizations discover and stop online manipulation before it spreads. It detects early warning signs of disinformation campaigns, helps teams understand what’s really going on, and supports fast, actionable responses.”
Competitors like Graphika and NewsGuard can also map stories, but they don’t offer full autoresponder functionality. Refute says it leads in both scale and independence.
“What sets us apart is the speed at which we detect threats and the ability of our platform to proactively respond to them. We aggregate signals from across the online environment into one clear, actionable view, so decision makers can act with confidence instead of guessing. Refute is already making a real-world difference in high-stakes environments, from protecting national elections to supporting industries like mining, where reputation and trust matter,” Garnett adds.
How does Refute approach diversity?
Speaking about diversity, Garnett said: “We see diversity as an important part of building our business and something we need to understand as we continue to scale. The hybrid threat is now widespread across Europe, so from the start we purposefully built a remote-first workforce across Europe, rather than just within the UK, by bringing together people with different nationalities, cultures and language expertise.”
“This approach is a direct reflection of our founders, Vlad is from Romania and I am from the UK. The types of disinformation campaigns launched against governments and private companies are so diverse and sophisticated that we need this breadth of experience, cultural understanding and language ability to ensure the products we develop can effectively address these evolving threats,” Garnett added.
What’s next for Refute?
The funding will be used to hire more engineers, improve detection algorithms, expand response kits and reach more European markets.
Garnett He said, “Over the next few years, our main goal is to expand our business by expanding our team and leveraging our talent across new markets. We are also in a rapidly changing space, so continuous and robust updates on how to detect threats faster and more efficiently and respond to what matters most is also a priority. We fully expect to see new types of tactics emerge, as well as unique market dynamics that will help us adjust our technology.”
