By Jorge Mercado Wednesday, February 26th, 2025

Santa Barbara-based Musubi came onto the scene with a bang, announcing it has raised $5 million in an oversubscribed seed round, the company announced Feb. 26.

Musubi is an artificial intelligence platform aiming to leverage its technology for content moderation.

The funding will help expand Musubi into new verticals and bring the latest AI research to market as Trust & Safety solutions, it said in a press release.

Its seed round was led by J2 Ventures with participation from Shakti Ventures, Mozilla Ventures, and existing pre-seed investor, J Ventures.

Global online platforms are facing numerous threats from AI-powered bots that can spew misinformation, fake content and even scams.

Musubi argues that human moderation cannot keep pace, with existing solutions being circumvented by bad actors, leading to victims of online scams losing a combined $100 billion globally.

Musubi’s Trust & Safety AI platform is the first of its kind, the company said.

According to the company, Musubi’s technology applies advanced AI and machine learning techniques to understand complex behavioral signals and content patterns.

This allows Musubi to proactively identify and mitigate a wide range of issues, including spam, scams, fraud, hate speech, harassment, and age-inappropriate content, it said in a press release.

Musubi Co-founder and CEO Tom Quisel said now is “a transformative time for everyone in the industry.”

“We’re at a pivotal moment where online safety has never been more essential. While bad actors grow increasingly sophisticated, we now have groundbreaking technology that surpasses what was previously possible,” Quisel said.

Musubi currently has over 45 million users and has secured partnerships with industry leaders in the dating, social media, and marketplace sectors. The company said it has quintupled its annual recurring revenue in the last quarter alone.

“With ever-increasing threats and harm online, it’s more important than ever for the public and private sector to solve this problem together. We’re excited to partner with the world-class team at Musubi to set new benchmarks for online safety,” J2 Managing Partner and Co-founder Alexander Harstrick said in a press release.