All analysis was generated autonomously, without human review. Scores are analytical opinions drawn from the cited public sources, without hands-on testing. They are not audits, certifications, investment reports, purchasing advice, or evaluations of quality.
Hive runs two businesses on one asset. Platforms including Reddit are reported moderation customers. Hive deployed deepfake detection offline, on premises, for intelligence agencies under a $2.4 million Defense Innovation Unit contract. Hive supplies both from one labeling workforce, more than five million registered workers labeling over ten million items a day, which appears to supply the training data behind its models. A rival could train comparable models given comparable data, but assembling that workforce is the harder job. Its headline figures, 100 enterprise customers, 300 percent growth, a $2 billion valuation, date to the April 2021 Series D, with none newer in the cited record. The labeling operation and the federal deployment are what a buyer can verify as current.
| Description | Hive sells cloud APIs and on-premise models for content understanding, including content moderation, deepfake and AI-generated media detection, visual classification, and search, used by digital platforms and government agencies. | [f1] |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2013 | [f2] |
| HQ | San Francisco, California, United States | [f3] |
| Funding | $121M total | [f4] |
| Latest funding | Series D, $50M, April 2021, led by Glynn Capital, at a $2B valuation | [f4] |
| Product | What it does |
|---|---|
| Content Moderation | Cloud APIs that classify visual, text, audio, and OCR content for trust-and-safety violations, with dedicated CSAM detection and demographic classification models. |
| AI-Generated Content Detection | Deepfake and AI-generated media classifiers for image, video, and audio, deployable offline and on-premise, sold to platforms and government for synthetic-media and disinformation defense. |
| Visual Intelligence | Models that detect objects, scenes, logos, and people across image and video, plus search, translation, and generation APIs for media and advertising workflows. |
Cyber Defense Matrix
| Identify | Protect | Detect | Respond | Recover | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Devices Workstations, servers, phones, tablets, storage, network devices, IoT infrastructure, and similar hardware. | |||||
| Applications Software, interactions, and application flows on the devices. | |||||
| Networks Connections and traffic flowing among devices and apps, plus communication paths. | |||||
| Data Content at rest, in transit, or in use across devices, apps, and networks. | |||||
| Users The people using the devices, apps, networks, and data. |
Hive uses AI to detect synthetic and harmful media, a content-authenticity and trust-and-safety mission rather than a defense of AI systems, so it is mapped to the Cyber Defense Matrix. Its models verify whether media is authentic or policy-violating across users, applications, and data. [f5]
How well the company can compete in its security market, scored across eight dimensions against public evidence.
| Dimension | Score |
|---|---|
| Problem Clarity How precisely the company defines its problem, with evidence the problem exists at the scale claimed. | 3/5 |
| Capability Depth How specific the technical capabilities are, with evidence beyond marketing claims such as docs, demos, and third-party validation. | 4/5 |
| Market Timing Whether the market is ready for this product, with evidence that buyers are actively seeking solutions. | 4/5 |
| Team Credibility Demonstrated domain expertise with public signals such as prior exits, publications, and industry recognition. | 3/5 |
| GTM Proof Evidence of actual traction (customers, revenue signals, partnerships) beyond stated intentions. | 4/5 |
| Funding Efficiency Whether funding matches go-to-market ambition, with signs of capital-efficient growth. | 2/5 |
| Category Clarity Whether the company creates or fits a recognizable category that buyers can quickly place in their stack. | 4/5 |
| Incumbent Defensibility How vulnerable the core value proposition is to absorption as a feature by a platform vendor. | 3/5 |
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A closer look at the company's product strategy, measuring how defensible it is against market forces and examining the eight areas behind it.
reinforce or reposition
| Dimension | Score |
|---|---|
| Value Delivery Does the product sell software as the product, or judgment, trust, or accountability with software as the delivery mechanism. | 1/3 |
| Switching Cost How expensive leaving is for a customer: data portability, integrations, learned workflows, network effects, regulatory data residency. | 2/3 |
| Compliance Moat Whether certifications, liability acceptance, or audit trails block an easy replacement. | 1/3 |
| Problem Complexity Whether the product requires ML, optimization, real-time systems, or years of specialized expertise. | 3/3 |
| Buyer Profile Whether buyers are SMB operators, mid-market IT teams, or regulated enterprises and governments with procurement gates. | 3/3 |
| Layer Whether the product is an end-user application, a platform with application features, or infrastructure other applications depend on. | 2/3 |
| Proprietary Data, Content, or IP Whether the product accumulates datasets, content licenses, or IP that a rival cannot recreate from scratch. | 2/3 |
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The reasoning for the scores, the strategy deep dive, the business risks, and more. AI access comes with the purchase, so your AI tools can read the full profile too. You keep 12 months of access.
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| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| f1 | https://thehive.ai | official | 2026-06-21 |
| f2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hive_(artificial_intelligence_company) | press | 2026-06-21 |
| f3 | https://www.biometricupdate.com/202412/dod-awards-contract-for-deepfake-detection-to-hive | press | 2026-06-21 |
| f4 | https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/21/hive-raises-85m-for-ai-based-apis-to-help-moderate-content-identify-objects-and-more/ | press | 2026-07-06 |
| f5 | https://thehive.ai/solutions/government-agencies | official | 2026-06-21 |
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| s1 | Hive: AI to Understand, Search, and Generate Content “AI to Understand, Search, and Generate Content” | official | 2026-06-21 |
| s2 | Hive: AI solutions for U.S. Government Agencies “Hive provides sophisticated synthetic multimedia detection and attribution capabilities to government agencies and public sector organizations to help proactively detect deception, fraud, disinformation and other malicious activities.” | official | 2026-06-21 |
| s3 | MIT Technology Review: The US Department of Defense is investing in deepfake detection “The US Department of Defense has invested $2.4 million over two years in deepfake detection technology from a startup called Hive AI. It's the first contract of its kind for the DOD's Defense Innovation Unit.” | press | 2026-06-29 |
| s4 | Biometric Update: DoD awards contract for deepfake detection to Hive “The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded a U$2.4 million contract for deepfake detection of video, image, and audio content to AI company Hive. The two-year deal will reinforce the country's national security.” | press | 2026-06-21 |
| s5 | Hive: Announcing Hive's Partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit “Under our initial two-year contract, Hive will partner with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to support the intelligence community with our deepfake detection models, deployed in an offline, on-premise environment and capable of detecting AI-generated video, image, and audio content.” | official | 2026-06-21 |
| s6 | Contrary Research: Hive Business Breakdown & Founding Story “In April 2021, Hive announced that it had 100 enterprise customers, including NBCUniversal, Interpublic Group, Walmart, Visa, Anheuser-Busch InBev, and more. It also said it grew its customer base and revenue by over 300% in the prior year.” | research | 2026-06-21 |
| s7 | Contrary Research: Hive valuation and founders “In April 2021, Hive announced a $50 million Series D which valued the company at $2 billion. Hive was founded by Kevin Guo (CEO) and Dmitriy Karpman (CTO).” | research | 2026-06-21 |
| s8 | Hive: Data Labeling “We have more than 5M registered workers on our labeling platform. Our large, globally distributed workforce labels 10M+ items daily.” | official | 2026-06-21 |
| s9 | Wikipedia: Hive (artificial intelligence company) “Hive is reported to have been engaged to provide content moderation services to social news aggregator Reddit, Giphy, BeReal, Donald Trump-affiliated social network Truth Social, and on online chat website Chatroulette.” | press | 2026-06-21 |
| s10 | Defense Innovation Unit: DIU, DoD Collaborate To Strengthen Synthetic Media Defenses “Hive was one of the initial companies selected to prototype their deepfake detection and attribution technology, delivering innovative solutions for the intelligence community.” | press | 2026-06-21 |
| s11 | Hive: Pricing “Detect Harmful Content. Visual Moderation, Text Moderation, CSAM Detection, Audio Moderation, OCR Moderation, Demographic Classification. Detect AI Content. AI Image + Deepfake Classification, AI Video Detection, AI Audio Classification.” | official | 2026-06-21 |
| s12 | Hive: Enterprise Commitments “SOC-2 Certified Infrastructure - Hive adheres to SOC 2 Type II compliance, ensuring rigorous security, availability, and confidentiality for enterprises.” | official | 2026-06-25 |
| s13 | Deepfake-Eval-2024: A Multi-Modal In-the-Wild Benchmark of Deepfakes Circulated in 2024 “We evaluate commercially available deepfake detection models from companies that partnered with TrueMedia.org: Hive, Reality Defender, Pindrop, AI or Not, Hiya, Fraunhofer, and Sensity AI.” | research | 2026-06-29 |
| s14 | Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence: Detection of cloned voices in realistic forensic voice comparison scenarios “The detection tool selected for this study was HIVE AI Detector (Hive, 2023), which outperformed competing models as well as human expert analysis in an independent research study (Ha et al., 2024).” | research | 2026-06-29 |
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| s1 | Hive: AI to Understand, Search, and Generate Content “AI to Understand, Search, and Generate Content” | official | 2026-06-21 |
| s2 | Hive: AI solutions for U.S. Government Agencies “Hive provides sophisticated synthetic multimedia detection and attribution capabilities to government agencies and public sector organizations to help proactively detect deception, fraud, disinformation and other malicious activities.” | official | 2026-06-21 |
| s3 | MIT Technology Review: The US Department of Defense is investing in deepfake detection “The US Department of Defense has invested $2.4 million over two years in deepfake detection technology from a startup called Hive AI. It's the first contract of its kind for the DOD's Defense Innovation Unit.” | press | 2026-06-29 |
| s4 | Biometric Update: DoD awards contract for deepfake detection to Hive “The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded a U$2.4 million contract for deepfake detection of video, image, and audio content to AI company Hive. The two-year deal will reinforce the country's national security.” | press | 2026-06-21 |
| s5 | Hive: Announcing Hive's Partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit “Under our initial two-year contract, Hive will partner with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to support the intelligence community with our deepfake detection models, deployed in an offline, on-premise environment and capable of detecting AI-generated video, image, and audio content.” | official | 2026-06-21 |
| s6 | Contrary Research: Hive Business Breakdown & Founding Story “In April 2021, Hive announced that it had 100 enterprise customers, including NBCUniversal, Interpublic Group, Walmart, Visa, Anheuser-Busch InBev, and more. It also said it grew its customer base and revenue by over 300% in the prior year.” | research | 2026-06-21 |
| s7 | Contrary Research: Hive valuation and founders “In April 2021, Hive announced a $50 million Series D which valued the company at $2 billion. Hive was founded by Kevin Guo (CEO) and Dmitriy Karpman (CTO).” | research | 2026-06-21 |
| s8 | Hive: Data Labeling “We have more than 5M registered workers on our labeling platform. Our large, globally distributed workforce labels 10M+ items daily.” | official | 2026-06-21 |
| s9 | Wikipedia: Hive (artificial intelligence company) “Hive is reported to have been engaged to provide content moderation services to social news aggregator Reddit, Giphy, BeReal, Donald Trump-affiliated social network Truth Social, and on online chat website Chatroulette.” | press | 2026-06-21 |
| s10 | Defense Innovation Unit: DIU, DoD Collaborate To Strengthen Synthetic Media Defenses “Hive was one of the initial companies selected to prototype their deepfake detection and attribution technology, delivering innovative solutions for the intelligence community.” | press | 2026-06-21 |
| s11 | Hive: Pricing “Detect Harmful Content. Visual Moderation, Text Moderation, CSAM Detection, Audio Moderation, OCR Moderation, Demographic Classification. Detect AI Content. AI Image + Deepfake Classification, AI Video Detection, AI Audio Classification.” | official | 2026-06-21 |
| s12 | Hive: Enterprise Commitments “SOC-2 Certified Infrastructure - Hive adheres to SOC 2 Type II compliance, ensuring rigorous security, availability, and confidentiality for enterprises.” | official | 2026-06-25 |
| s13 | Deepfake-Eval-2024: A Multi-Modal In-the-Wild Benchmark of Deepfakes Circulated in 2024 “We evaluate commercially available deepfake detection models from companies that partnered with TrueMedia.org: Hive, Reality Defender, Pindrop, AI or Not, Hiya, Fraunhofer, and Sensity AI.” | research | 2026-06-29 |
| s14 | Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence: Detection of cloned voices in realistic forensic voice comparison scenarios “The detection tool selected for this study was HIVE AI Detector (Hive, 2023), which outperformed competing models as well as human expert analysis in an independent research study (Ha et al., 2024).” | research | 2026-06-29 |
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