Seed3 February 2026

Refute secures £5m in seed funding led by Amadeus Capital Partners to expand its counter disinformation technology.

Amadeus Capital Partners led the seed round with participation from Playfair, Episode 1, Osney Capital and NSSIF to help the counter disinformation firm grow its engineering operations.

£5.0MSeed

Refute develops military-grade artificial intelligence platforms designed to help governments and commercial enterprises identify and neutralise online disinformation campaigns. The company uses advanced detection models to surface early signals of manipulation and provide automated response strategies.

London-based counter disinformation specialist Refute has secured £5m in seed financing to scale its detection capabilities and expand its engineering team. The investment was led by deep tech investor Amadeus Capital Partners, with additional backing from Playfair, Episode 1, Osney Capital and the National Security Strategic Investment Fund.

The capital infusion follows a period of rapid growth for the firm since exiting stealth, during which it deployed its military-grade intelligence platform to government and commercial clients facing coordinated online manipulation. The company plans to use the proceeds to accelerate product development across European markets as hybrid warfare and automated threat vectors intensify.

From the founder

"Europe is facing the most significant wave of hybrid warfare in modern history. Disinformation is no longer just a peripheral nuisance, but now a reputational threat and strategic weapon targeting nations, institutions and corporations alike. Refute was created to meet this moment. We help governments and commercial organisations strengthen their resilience, protect their operations, and outpace their adversaries to function in an increasingly hostile information environment."

Tom Garnett

CEO and Co-Founder at Refute

Investor perspective

"We’re delighted to lead Refute’s seed round, having originally invested at the pre-seed, to support the business building what we see as critical infrastructure for the future of a well-functioning society. Disinformation is one of the fastest growing risks globally for governments and enterprises. Tom and Vlad have demonstrated their ability to execute quickly and build a world leading set of capabilities which detects and responds to threats autonomously at the speed of the attackers. This is hugely valuable and is being demonstrated already with a significant pace of adoption from customers. We couldn’t be more excited to join this journey to build the dominant disinformation analytics product globally."

James Baker

Principal, Amadeus Capital Partners