Cision picks up $USD 250 million
Cision has announced it has secured commitments for $USD 250 million of new money financing to provide additional business flexibility and facilitate growth. The financing package received support from existing lenders. The comprehensive refinancing extends Cision’s debt maturities to 2030 and beyond. New CEO Guy Abramo emphasised that this financing positions Cision to execute its long-term growth strategy. The company has also been hard at work selling HARO to Featured.com, and closing its journalism jobs board.
Agorapulse Acquires Mention
Social media management platform Agorapulse has announced the acquisition of Mention, the brand monitoring and social listening solution. The acquisition brings together two complementary products, with Agorapulse CEO describing the alignment as “more than just a strategic move” but rather “the alignment of two complementary visions, products, and cultures.” The deal represents a major milestone in Agorapulse’s stated mission to become a leading global platform for comprehensive social media management, expanding their capabilities beyond scheduling and engagement to include more robust monitoring and listening functions.
Dataminr Secures $USD 100 million loan
Dataminr has obtained a $100 million convertible loan from Fortress Investment Group to accelerate its development of generative and agentic AI products. Fortress managing directors highlighted their confidence in Dataminr’s growth potential, specifically mentioning the company’s ReGenAI capability that enables users to develop real-time intelligence from public data. The funding follows last month’s $USD 85 million in convertible and credit funding from NightDragon and HSBC.
Fivecast closes Series A funding round
Sticking with OSINT funding, Australian open-source intelligence startup Fivecast has raised $AUD 30 million in Series A funding to enhance its platform that scans publicly available data across social media and the dark web. Much like Dataminr, Fivecast’s AI and machine learning-powered solution identifies threats. Fivecast plans to expand its services geographically.
UK Government releases “Assist” AI Tool code
The UK Government Communication Service (GCS) has unveiled Assist, a generative AI tool designed specifically for government communicators to enhance efficiency and effectiveness across their communications operations. This bespoke conversational AI tool helps users brainstorm ideas, create first drafts, and review work while ensuring all outputs adhere to GCS policies and standards – significantly reducing time spent on initial drafts. The tool has already been deployed to over 2,700 GCS members and now you can build it yourself as GCS has very generously made the code available on Github.
Media Intelligence Product Updates
Here are some of the product announcements that caught our attention this month:
Meltwater unveiled a comprehensive platform update featuring enhanced media monitoring capabilities, improved AI-driven sentiment analysis, and streamlined reporting tools to help communications professionals better track brand coverage and measure campaign impact across both traditional and social media channels.
Pureprofile launched three AI-led social listening tools powered by Quilt.AI that analyze consumer sentiment and emerging trends across social media, news sites, blogs and search data, including Social Meaning, Emerging Consumer Trends, and Beauty Trends to help brands make data-driven decisions and identify patterns in unstructured data.
UNICEPTA by PRophet expanded its media intelligence partnership with the European Commission to include comprehensive global media analysis services, providing real-time insights across all 27 EU member states in 32 languages for the Directorate-General for Communication.