This round of investment takes Fivecast’s total funding received to $34 million.

Fivecast provides OSINT technology powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning to aid defence, intelligence, police, border security and corporations in keeping society safer.

The software features targeted collection and risk analysis of publicly available information for specific use cases, such as identifying extremists, terrorists, drug trafficking, and organised crime.

US-based cyber security venture capital firm Ten Eleven led the funding round with additional investment from existing Australian backers, the CSIRO’s Main Sequence, and the South Australian Venture Capital Fund, managed by Artesian.

Fivecast is building its product portfolio and drive growth in the Five Eyes community following strong momentum in Australia, a surge in demand in the US, and the establishment of its UK office.

It is also targeting the Asia Pacific region and Europe, and is adding further capabilities in adjacent use cases such corporate security and financial intelligence.

The company is also continuing recruitment of industry professionals, including tradecraft experts, developers, and sales and marketing personnel to its four offices, having recently achieved a milestone of more than 100 employees globally.

“An increasingly complex and growing threat landscape combined with the sheer volume of data available online make it extremely difficult for intelligence personnel to collect, filter and analyse data in a timely way,” said Fivecast CEO and co-founder Dr Brenton Cooper.

“Our platform enables customers to fight the proliferation of threats, pierce through sophisticated online landscapes, and speed up investigations to protect global communities and organisations.”

“Since our founding in 2017, we have enabled government agencies and corporations to identify threats, reduce risks and mitigate incidents across a diverse range of use cases – from divisive US politics influencing violent extremism and China’s influence in the South pacific, through to crypto scams and money laundering. This Series A funding ensures we can continue building advanced capabilities to support our customers’ targeted objectives, and add headcount to service markets across the globe – particularly in Australia, the US and the UK.”

“We see open-source intelligence (OSINT) as a large and emerging sector driven by the explosion of publicly available content, now growing ever-larger via the newly accessible AI-generated multi-media content platforms,” said Ten Eleven Ventures managing partner Alex Doll.

“Governments, law enforcement, and other organisations need a faster and easier way to collect and analyse this open-source data. Fivecast's advanced collection methods and AI-supported analysis tools bypass current manual data analysis processes to meet this important need. Notably, this is our second investment in Australia, a country we know has tremendous entrepreneurial and technical talent. We will make additional investments in Australia in the years ahead and look forward to helping bridge the country's incredible tech to other markets.”

“Deep tech is boundless in its ability to create safer societies through research, data and advanced capabilities that tackle among the most pressing challenges we face,” said Main Sequence partner Martin Duursma.

“Fivecast incorporates these principles to address the growing spectrum of global threats by deciphering almost endless troves of publicly available data, and applying AI to help uncover insights essential to protecting communities and organisations. It's yet another example of Australian deep-tech innovation making a positive, large-scale impact on the world.”

Fivecast is an Australian Government Defence Industry Security Program (DISP) member, maintains UK Cyber Essentials certification, its software products are NIST 800-171 compliant, and its executive, tradecraft, and development teams hold security clearances for Australia, the US, and UK.

Fivecast is also the first Australian company to be awarded a Defence Innovation Unit (DIU) project with the US Department of Defence.