MINNEAPOLIS, Oct. 9, 2026 — GUDEA, the AI-powered narrative intelligence platform billed as the “Storm Tracker for the Internet,” closed an oversubscribed $7 million seed-stage financing co-led by Mudita Ventures and Collide Capital. The new capital will fund accelerated product development, expanded platform coverage, and enterprise growth as demand rises for the company’s narrative intelligence services.
“Every organization now operates inside an information environment it does not control and often cannot see,” said Keith Presley, co-founder and CEO of GUDEA. “Narratives shape markets, brands, and public trust long before they show up in a headline. The demand behind this round reflects a simple reality: leaders need to know what is moving online, who is moving it, and what happens next. We are scaling the platform and the team to give them exactly that.”
How GUDEA’s narrative intelligence works
GUDEA combines behavioral intelligence, graph neural network modeling, and real-time monitoring across dozens of online platforms to show where narratives originate, which users are driving them, and how quickly they are likely to spread. The platform distinguishes authentic engagement from inauthentic behavior and classifies audiences into five distinct categories, providing organizations an early, evidence-based view of emerging risk. GUDEA’s data has informed reporting by national news outlets, its platform supports Fortune 100 companies and leading communications firms, and the company was named a 2026 SXSW Pitch finalist and a 2026 Webby Award nominee.
Funding, founders and next steps
The $7 million round was oversubscribed and co-led by Mudita Ventures and Collide Capital. Buddy Foster, an investor at Mudita Ventures, said: “The information environment has become a core business risk, and GUDEA measures it with a rigor we have not seen anywhere else in the market. Keith and his team pair deep intelligence experience with technology that already delivers for demanding clients, and we are proud to back them as they scale.”
Founded in 2023 by Keith Presley, Jonathan Sperber, and James Thomin — whose backgrounds span military intelligence, national security operations, and artificial intelligence — GUDEA has seen growing demand from enterprises, public institutions, and security-sensitive organizations. The seed capital will support continued investment in the platform’s predictive modeling capabilities, expansion of the engineering and go-to-market teams, and broader coverage across platforms, languages, and regions.
For more information, visit gudea.ai.
