Signal AI secures $165M as Battery Ventures takes majority stake to redefine risk and reputation intelligence

Signal AI lands $165M to redefine risk and reputation intelligence

Updated: 12:45 EDT / September 24, 2025

Signal AI raised $165 million in growth equity led by Battery Ventures, which will take a majority stake and back the next phase of expansion. Existing investors Highland Europe, Mercuri and MMC Ventures remain minority shareholders. The company plans to scale its risk intelligence products and expand across the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Why this funding matters

Risk now moves faster than internal dashboards. Signal AI is building an external signal layer so executives can see threats and opportunities before they hit earnings, brand, or compliance. That capability is becoming a board-level requirement for PR, communications and finance leaders.

What Signal AI actually does

The platform ingests data from 226 markets and 75 languages across news articles, TV, podcasts, regulatory filings and social platforms - from mainstream channels to fringe sources. Machine learning models detect and connect "signals" across businesses, people and issues so teams can act early.

Chief Executive David Benigson says the edge comes from access to premium compliant data and the precision of its AI models. "Our vision and mission as a business is to redefine risk and reputation intelligence," he said.

The blind spot: external risk

Most enterprise systems optimize internal data and workflows. The bigger shocks often come from outside: policy shifts, activist pressure, litigation, supply chain failures, or viral narratives. "A lot of the threats companies are grappling with come from outside of their business, not from within," Benigson said.

Who uses it and why

Customers include Diageo, NetApp, Volvo Cars, Bloomberg and Uber. Teams use the platform to spot emerging risks, benchmark against peers and act before issues turn into reputational or financial damage.

• Early-warning on regulatory, ESG and legal exposure
• Competitor and sector sentiment tracking
• Stakeholder mapping across media and policy ecosystems
• Issue escalation playbooks informed by real-time signals

Ask AIQ: answers to complex questions in seconds

Signal AI's latest product, Ask AIQ, uses retrieval-augmented generation to surface patterns and trends from large volumes of curated data. Leaders can ask questions in natural language about risk, sentiment and market dynamics.

Examples include: "What are the trends around generative AI and copyright risks?" or "Who had the best sentiment across my competitors in US-based sources?" Ask AIQ returns detailed answers with visualizations to support decisions and speed response.

New to retrieval-augmented generation? See this overview from IBM for context: What is RAG.

M&A and product roadmap

The company has integrated two acquisitions: Kelp Inc. (2022) for corporate reputation management and Social 360 (2024) for advanced reputation monitoring. Benigson says the next step is predictive risk intelligence that connects signals and anticipates threats using a blend of discriminative and generative AI.

The goal: decision intelligence where AI agents don't just flag issues but recommend responses. "Every organization should have a chief risk officer, and every chief risk officer should have a tool like Signal AI in their hands to get ahead of external risks and threats in a more predictive and preemptive way," Benigson said.

Investor view

"Signal AI has carved out a differentiated and, we feel, highly defensible market position at the intersection of AI, risk and enterprise software," said Collier Searle, a principal at Battery Ventures joining the board. The firm sees Signal AI becoming a "central nervous system for risk-aware organizations." Learn more about the lead investor: Battery Ventures.

What PR, communications and finance teams can do now

• Audit your external risk coverage: sources, languages, and markets that matter to your business.
• Set alerts for regulatory themes, key stakeholders and supply chain exposures tied to revenue drivers.
• Benchmark sentiment and share of voice monthly against core competitors and sectors.
• Build issue-response playbooks that trigger actions based on thresholds (volume, sentiment, source credibility).
• Tie risk signals to materiality and KPIs so comms, IR and finance work from the same dashboard.

If your team is upskilling for AI-driven risk and reputation work, explore curated learning paths by role and finance-focused tools here: AI courses by job and AI tools for finance.

Image: Nepool/Shutterstock