Logically raises $24 mn; Vitruvian Partners leads funding round

It has been estimated that fake news is costing the global economy around $78 billion every year and Logically is addressing that problem.

Logically, a technology company using advanced AI to tackle harmful misinformation, today announced the completion of a $24 million funding round led by growth investor Vitruvian Partners. The round also included investment from the Amazon Alexa Fund, and existing seed investors XTX Ventures and the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF), managed by Mercia Asset Management Plc.

Logically will use the funds to scale its team and capabilities in India, as well as drive growth across other core markets including the US and UK. The investment enables Logically to accelerate its technologies across AI, machine learning and OSINT (open-source intelligence), and stay at the forefront of the fight against harmful and misleading online information and conspiracy-driven threats in critical areas such as election integrity, public health and national security.

Online mis- and disinformation continues to cause significant real-world harm. In the past year, one has seen the results of democratic elections questioned, Covid-19 vaccine take-up stall and health misinformation proliferate, evidence of foreign influence disinformation campaigns, and the rise of violent extremism fueled by conspiracy ideology. It has been estimated that fake news is costing the global economy around $78 billion every year.

“Our work identifying and disarming damaging and misleading information has never been more important. India and the wider APAC region is an important focus of growth for us, and I’m excited for the impact this investment will enable us to achieve,” said Lyric Jain, founder and CEO of Logically. “ I look forward to working with the Vitruvian team to grow our ability to counter these rapidly evolving and growing challenges.”

Increasingly governments, organizations and platforms are recognizing an urgent need to tackle harmful and misleading online content, a need further compelled by the growing disinformation-for-hire industry and foreign actors intent on spreading false information for financial or ideological gain.

“We are pleased to partner with Logically, who have a clear and compelling mission to reduce the harm caused by mis- and disinformation, and to enhance civic discourse,” said Peter Read, Cortex Partner at Vitruvian. “We’ve been impressed by Logically’s development over recent years, in the public and private sector as well as with the social media platforms themselves. We look forward to supporting Logically’s expansion into new geographies and sectors in order to increase the impact they can have on this global problem.”

2021 was a year of significant growth for Logically. The company continued to invest in its engineering and OSINT teams in Bangalore and Mysore, more than doubling its headcount in India. In March 2021, Logically officially launched its flagship threat intelligence platform, Logically Intelligence, offering both analytical capabilities and countermeasure deployment to tackle mis- and disinformation.

In addition to announcing its partnership with the security firm RAXA, Logically launched Logically Health in India; a multi-pronged initiative designed to help public and private sector healthcare organizations better identify and manage harmful health misinformation. The company is currently expanding its partnerships with state governments, law enforcement and private sector companies across the country.

Over the course of the year, Logically said it conducted a number of high-profile and impactful investigations. These include unearthing a disinformation campaign run by a coordinated inauthentic behaviour network spreading a false narrative on Indian government military decisions, uncovering a Pakistan-based disinformation network spreading polarizing narratives about the Mizoram-Assam border clashes and identifying the polarizing and false narratives being spread about the farmers’ protests.

Logically approaches the issues of mis- and disinformation from an end-to-end perspective, with Logically Intelligence able to find, triage and respond to information threats across over 120 million domains and 40 social media platforms at speed and at scale. Following the closure of this funding round, Logically is continuing to develop these cutting-edge monitoring, analytical and countermeasure capabilities. These include addressing multimedia content, tracking emerging narratives, identifying coordinated inauthentic behaviour and formulating effective and streamlined responses to threats.