The impetus for the business came when cofounders Ksenia Iliuk and Andriy Kusyy attended an information warfare event at Chatham House.

“We started thinking about how to conduct research, pull data, and design different types of intervention on this very topic,” Ksenia Iliuk says.

After working with researchers on a variety of projects, the Ukrainian duo began to publish their findings, providing data for think tanks to inform decision and policy making.

They decided that in order to scale the impact of the research data projects, they needed a product that “multiple companies across a variety of sectors could easily use.”

Today, LetsData uses AI to scan millions of media and social media publications detecting early signals of InfoOps where information is deliberately weaponized by cybercriminals, hostile states or competitors. The startup helps commercial and government agencies combat information warfare including disinformation, spoofing and synthetic identities.

“We realized that many organizations specializing in identifying and eliminating different elements of information operations were using manual or rudimentary detection methods. Most lacked advanced detection capabilities, typically relying on brand monitoring platforms which often missed more elaborate information operations,” Andriy said.

Leading the charge against state-sponsored disinformation

All this against the backdrop of a full-scale Russian invasion and it was in the aftermath of the ongoing war the founders launched LetsData. In the digital age, information operations perpetrated by bad actors are accelerating thanks to advancements in AI technology enabling cyberhackers to mimic human behavior with terrifying precision.

“There was an immense amount of disinformation from Russia targeting western democracies and we felt there was an opportunity to create a solution that was scalable and easier to use than other solutions on the market,” says Andriy.

Whilst LetsData leverages AI to fight cybercrime, they are swimming against a tide of malicious actors who are exploiting AI to devise subtle yet insidious tactics to infiltrate and intimidate.

“LetsData started life as an AI-first company, using traditional machine learning techniques combined with large language models. AI helps us scale up so we can scan large amounts of data and therefore better manage the sheer size of the media environment. This allows us to increase the amount of information operations we can detect and subsequently the media space that we can scan. It means we can shorten the time we deliver work to clients since we can increase the speed of detection”.

Of cyberhackers, Iliuk says information operations typically intensify during high profile events like elections or conflicts. She spoke of the “democratization of AI that enables hackers to create their own disinformation campaigns at scale,” with AI hacking tactics advancing at breakneck speeds that are often impossible to track and eliminate.

Today, cyberwarfare goes beyond political disruption with several commercial and private entities falling victim to malicious attacks.

“We’ve seen public social engineering like creating synthetic accounts on social media to run scams or attempting to destroy the reputations of competitors by fueling some conspiracy theories,” Iliuk says.

“AI hacking is constantly evolving so, for us, it's very important to be researching those new techniques. We look at how we can use AI and the latest state of the art technology in order to simulate detection of those attacks. Oftentimes, quite worryingly, these tactics will primarily be tested in a war zone before being replicated for use in the commercial space as well,” Iliuk warned.

Maximizing growth and gaining recognition from business leaders

To maximize their impact, LetsData joined the Google for Startups Growth Academy: AI for Cybersecurity program to help scale the business and accelerate growth. Since completion, the founders have experienced huge success; doubling their team and revenue.

“Participating in the program has played a huge role in the growth of LetsData and it was great to have direct access to the Google Cloud team as well as the mentors and peers from the program,” said Andriy.

LetsData now uses GPU-enabled instances for the efficient batch processing of millions of publications, PubSub to streamline the data flow and the Google Vertex AI platform for model training, authentication and deployment.

As Ukrainian founders, the duo were selected for the Ukraine Support Fund, an initiative which allocates equity-free cash awards and Google support to Ukraine-based startups.

“It’s a big honor for us to be selected among those other Ukrainian companies. We have very clear goals when joining this program; we wanted to validate our offering to potential customers but we were hitting a financial obstacle. Our work requires lots of computational resources that rely on significant capital. Now with the funding, we can decrease the time it takes to produce threat reports and double the amount of leads we process. This also means we are on track to triple our revenues in the next year,” says Iliuk.

As CEO at LetsData, Iliuk is among a rare contingency of female founders of cybersecurity startups. As a testament to the entrepreneurial success of the business, both founders were invited to meet with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai at the Munich Security Forum.

Clearly won over by their expertise, Pichai went on to shout out the startup in a Financial Times interview.

“As a result of that media coverage, we received PR attention from the likes of Forbes and prospective clients began reaching out too,” Iliuk shared proudly.

After living through the Russian invasion, LetsData’s Ukrainian founders are committed to leveraging AI for social good.

“We feel it's a part of our social value to share this data with as broad an audience as possible; whether that’s civil society, NGO organizations, policy groups or environmental organizations. We want to reduce the harmful impact of disinformation on wider society by combatting dangerous conspiracy theories whilst protecting democracy.”