Ukrainian startup Osavul raises first million in investments to combat disinformation

The Ukrainian startup Osavul, specializing in cybersecurity, information search, and analysis, emerged at the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion. Initially, the team operated on a volunteer basis, but by 2023, they transitioned into a commercial project and attracted $1,000,000 in investments.

In February 2022, Dmitriy Pleshakov and Dmitriy Bilash assembled a volunteer team to combat information attacks and so-called "disinformation" from Russia. Within a year, they transitioned into a commercial startup. Some team members initially volunteered with them, while others joined later. In May, they found a partner – the Ukrainian venture fund SMRK (founded by CEO MacPaw Щlexander Kosovan, as well as entrepreneurs Andrey Dovzhenko and Vlad Tislenko). In May 2023, they announced the attraction of one million dollars as part of a seed investment round.

What Osavul does:

• Helps identify and assess potential information threats, even collaborating with various government agencies and institutions.

• Osavul employs analytics from organizations, companies, and institutions, who, based on the information received regarding threats and markers of their danger, provide this data to those who make decisions. In other words, it helps them work more efficiently and quickly.

• The platform analyzes the information space from various sources, including social networks, the web environment, and Telegram. It can measure quantitative and qualitative indicators of potential threats, identify the primary source, and analyze signs of coordination.

The artificial intelligence in the Osavul platform operates in two main directions: content search and behavioral analysis.

Currently, they primarily work with textual data because harmful narratives and disinformation usually spread in textual format. Tools are used to identify emotions, sentiments, viewpoints, etc.

Regarding behavioral characteristics analysis, there are many different indicators of coordinated actions that are analyzed: for example, the time of message dissemination, account connectivity, etc.

What's next:

One of the development directions is multilingualism to support and analyze more global languages. For example, this will help monitor Asian markets.

They also plan to improve the platform so that Osavul users can get a complete picture and answers to all their questions, so that processes and research require not weeks, but only a few days.

They also plan to conduct their own investigations and publicly speak about important matters.