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Spectrum Labs closes $32M Series B led by Intel Capital

Nancy Dahlberg
Nancy Dahlberg
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The funding will scale the Miami-based startup’s AI-powered content moderation platform

Harmful online content can have real world consequences, as the Capitol Insurrections and the Facebook Papers of 2021 clearly showed, and for companies it’s a day to day battle to keep their content safe and trusted. That’s why Miami-based Spectrum Labs is scaling its mission to help companies build safe, inclusive, and engaged communities with its trust & safety technology at the core.

Today, the Miami-based AI-powered content moderation platform has raised a a $32 million Series B investment led by Intel Capital.  In total. Spectrum Labs has raised about $45 million in venture capital.

Munich Re Ventures, Gaingels, Harris Barton, and existing investors Wing Venture Capital, Greycroft, Ridge Ventures, Super{set}, and Global Founders Capital participated in the round. As part of the transaction, Intel Capital’s investment director, Divya Sudhakar, will join the company’s board.

“Our AI can be deployed across languages, behaviors, and industries very effectively to fuel growth and build trust through safer and more inclusive communities,” said Spectrum Labs co-founder and CEO Justin Davis. “This investment led by Intel Capital, the company empowering the future of compute, will help Spectrum Labs to achieve our ambition of enabling every company with the infrastructure and real-time, easy to deploy AI that’s critical to build trust with every person, everywhere in the world, at every moment.”

Spectrum Labs, which announced its relocation to Miami from San Francisco in November, will use the funding to scale the adoption of its platform and develop new applications. “Spectrum Labs will scale the adoption of its leading AI-powered content moderation platform for online communities into new areas of the enterprise, developing applications for human resources, sales, customer service, and brand safety teams,” Davis said.

By applying Natural Language Understanding technology, Spectrum Labs can more efficiently and effectively analyze and flag toxic online content. The platform detects more than 40 toxic behaviors, including hate speech, violent extremism, sexual harassment, and cyberbullying across 30-plus languages in text and audio on everything from dating apps and social networking to retail marketplaces and e-sports.

For instance, Scott Gelb, President of Games at Riot Games, said that  Spectrum Labs’ platform helped Riot classify more than 200 million lines of disruptive behavior in text in a variety of categories. In doing so, Spectrum Labs’ technology enables companies to automate their response to problematic content in real time, enabling trust and transparency. Indeed, a recent survey by IDC showed that by 2025, two-thirds of the G2000 boards will ask for a formal trust initiative that executes a road map to increase an enterprise’s security, privacy protections, and ethical execution.

“We believe Spectrum Labs’ Natural Language Understanding technology has the potential to become the core platform that powers the trust initiatives of thousands of companies around the world,” said Mark Rostick, Vice President & Senior Managing Director at Intel Capital, in a statement. “As digital trust and ethical operations emerge as a key factor to help organizations differentiate themselves, we see a huge opportunity to build a Trust & Safety tech layer into enterprise operations.”  

The startup, founded in 2016, has a distributed team of about 40 employees across 15 states, Davis said this week. “I’m feeling nicely settled in and I’m never leaving. You can quote me on that. It is special to be a small part of such a growing and diverse tech community here in Miami and I’m excited for what the future holds for the area.”

Although the team is remote-first, Davis said the company recently hired its first employee in Miami. “As we get settled, we hope to attract existing employees interested in relocating to the area and to expand our local recruiting efforts.”

The key driver for the company’s relocation to MIami in November was to tap into Miami’s diverse and highly-skilled talent pool, Davis said at the time. “Having diverse perspectives is a catalyst in building an inclusive AI company, especially one in content moderation,” he said at the time, also adding that another pull was “Mayor Suarez’s focus on building a vibrant tech community.”

This story was updated. Riley Kaminer contributed to this report. Follow Nancy Dahlberg on Twitter @ndahlberg and email her at [email protected]

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