Social data platform Citibeats raises €2 million

Barcelona-based social data platform Citibeats has raised €2 million in a new funding round. The startup develops AI solutions that use unstructured data to identify social trends and can deliver early warnings on critical issues. Through data privacy and bias reduction algorithms, the startup is targeting governments, multilateral organisations, and private companies. To date, Citibeats has raised €3.5 million in funding.

The easiest way to think about Citibeat’s offer is comparable to brand monitoring, a process that focuses mainly on social listening and then reacting, i.e. with a significant lag. With its AI-based solution, Citibeats virtually eliminates the processing lag and is able to detect and analyse complex narratives from a wide range of sources, often with a multitude of various topics interwoven.

Citibeats was founded in 2018 by Ivan Caballero, and reports that it has informed over $1 billion in social risk mitigation decisions, to both private and public entities. The company’s technology has assisted the World Health Organisation better manage the infodemic via its EARS project, which monitors online COVID-19 chatter in real-time.

In addition to the World Health Organisation Citibeats counts Twitter, Facebook, United Nations Development Programme, The Inter-American Development Bank, The International Telecommunication Union, NTT Data, and The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) amongst its client base.

"The successful use cases we’ve worked on during these years are a confirmation of how reliable, transparent, and precise our proprietary NLP and ML technology is," commented Caballero. "Our platform can guarantee to deliver huge quantities of data of great quality, in real-time. These investments will support our expansion across LATAM, and the US and consolidate our presence in APAC and EMEA."

The latest funding round was provided by IDB Lab, CAF, family office Estinvest, Previsora General Mutualidad de Previsión Social, with previous investor Everis Fitalent following on.