Refute has raised £5m in seed funding to accelerate its mission to protect organisations and democracies from the rapidly evolving landscape of hybrid warfare and disinformation threats.

The round was led by deep tech specialist Amadeus Capital Partners, with participation from Playfair, Episode 1, Osney Capital and the National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF), the UK Government’s deep tech venture capital fund that invests in dual-use technologies for national security and defence.

Refute’s founders have over 40 years of experience creating technologies to fight terrorist attacks and financial crime, and elevate internet trust. As hybrid warfare intensifies, threat actors are rapidly evolving their tactics, blending bot farms with influencers, deploying agentic AI for end‑to‑end automation, and increasingly targeting commercial organisations alongside governments.

Since emerging from stealth and closing its pre-seed round in 2024, Refute has built military‑grade AI capabilities now used by leading commercial and government customers. The platform surfaces early‑stage signals of online manipulation, providing intelligence and recommended response strategies at the pace of the attackers.