Golden Owl Secures €1.4M from First Drop to Combat Disinformation with AI Technology

Spanish deeptech startup Golden Owl has secured €1.4 million in seed funding to develop its platform that transforms scattered open-source data into actionable geopolitical and business intelligence. The funding round was led by Valencia-based impact fund First Drop, with additional support from business angels and public sources including ENISA certification and a NEOTEC grant from CDTI.

Founded by Ana Beik and Sabi Soltani, Golden Owl addresses the growing challenge companies face in extracting valuable insights from their data reserves amid supply chain disruptions, infrastructure security breaches, and the proliferation of disinformation campaigns.

The startup’s platform distinguishes itself by collecting data from open, deep, and dark web sources while integrating information across various formats and languages. Unlike traditional analytics systems, Golden Owl employs a network of AI agents to identify patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed.

“Our impact often remains invisible, operating within decision-making processes that rarely reveal their intelligence sources,” noted co-founder Ana Beik, highlighting the company’s behind-the-scenes approach to data intelligence.

The platform’s innovative approach moves beyond conventional keyword monitoring by utilizing a multi-agent system that handles everything from large-scale data collection to real-time anomaly detection and automated cross-checking. Rather than relying on basic search techniques, it builds dynamic models of subjects, contexts, and relationships to track behavioral patterns and network formations.

This approach allows Golden Owl to detect early warning signs of disruption before they become evident through conventional monitoring methods, giving clients a significant advantage in rapidly evolving situations.

The startup has strategically positioned itself to serve two critical markets. In the security sector, the platform identifies hybrid threats, influence campaigns, and coordinated actions while supporting infrastructure protection and forensic investigations. For businesses, it offers comprehensive supply chain monitoring, geopolitical and regulatory risk analysis, competitor intelligence, and what the company terms “federated intelligence.”

This dual-market strategy reflects the reality that many intelligence needs span both security and business domains. By addressing both without compromising depth, Golden Owl aims to provide a more integrated solution than specialized competitors.

The company enters a competitive landscape that includes established players like Palantir, Recorded Future, and Babel Street. Golden Owl’s market differentiation stems from its assertion that these competitors have not fully succeeded in integrating unstructured, non-indexed sources into a coherent reasoning framework – a gap their technology aims to fill.

The €1.4 million investment will be allocated to three primary areas: enhancing the company’s technical infrastructure, expanding access to non-indexed sources across various web environments, and accelerating commercial deployment in key sectors including energy, logistics, manufacturing, security, and government.

As geopolitical tensions rise globally and supply chains face increasing vulnerabilities, tools that can provide early warnings and actionable intelligence are becoming increasingly valuable to both public and private sector organizations. Golden Owl’s development comes at a time when data overload paradoxically makes extracting meaningful insights more challenging despite the abundance of available information.

The startup’s growth reflects the broader expansion of intelligence technologies beyond traditional government and military applications into corporate environments, where understanding complex global risks has become essential to operational resilience and strategic planning.