Dataminr

Dataminr

Company type	Private
Industry	Artificial intelligence, Software as a service (SaaS)
Founded	2009 (2009)
Founder	Ted Bailey, Sam Hendel, Jeff Kinsey
Headquarters	New York City , United States
Area served	Worldwide
Products	Dataminr Pulse, First Alert
Number of employees	800+

Dataminr is an artificial intelligence firm focused on detecting real-time events and risks. Its commercial offering, Dataminr Pulse, assists businesses in tracking live developments and handling crisis situations by utilizing playbooks, communication tools, and documentation following incidents. The company's First Alert system aids emergency responders during natural disasters and critical events. Among its competitors are social monitoring providers such as Feedly, Geofeedia, RavenPack, Semantic Visions, ShadowDragon, and Signal AI.

Based in New York, Dataminr has a workforce exceeding 800 employees and maintains offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Bozeman, Seattle, London, Dublin, Melbourne, and Copenhagen. The company’s SaaS solutions cater to a variety of sectors that demand prompt intelligence, highlighting its commitment to international reach and market impact.

History

Founded in 2009 by Yale alumni Ted Bailey, Sam Hendel, and Jeff Kinsey, Dataminr gained prominence by issuing an alert about Osama bin Laden’s death 23 minutes ahead of major news organizations.

In 2014, the company collaborated with CNN and Twitter to introduce Dataminr for News, a platform designed to notify journalists of breaking information emerging on Twitter.

Dataminr showcased its AI prowess by forecasting COVID-19 surges in 14 US states one week before they occurred. In May 2019, it partnered with the United Nations to deploy its First Alert product to thousands of UN staff for crisis monitoring purposes.

The firm's social media intelligence contract with the FBI concluded in late 2020 and was succeeded by Zerofox. On January 5, 2021, Dataminr reportedly alerted Capitol security personnel about online discussions preceding the January 6 Capitol riot.

In July 2021, Dataminr completed its inaugural acquisition by buying UK-based geovisualization company WatchKeeper, integrating its data layers into the Pulse platform to provide richer event context. Subsequently, in October 2021, it acquired Krizo, a Copenhagen-based platform specializing in real-time crisis response.

Monitoring of abortion rights demonstrations

Investigations by The Intercept disclosed that Dataminr supplied social media monitoring of lawful pro-abortion rights protests to the US Marshals Service, sparking concerns over surveillance of constitutionally protected activities.

Monitoring of racial justice demonstrations

During the George Floyd protests in 2020, law enforcement agencies reportedly utilized Dataminr’s services to track social media activity related to protest locations and movements. This raised scrutiny given previous assurances from Twitter and Dataminr denying involvement in domestic surveillance efforts. Twitter characterized Dataminr as solely providing "news alerting" services. Dataminr maintained that its First Alert technology detects breaking news without factoring in racial or ethnic identifiers and does not permit geospatial tracking or mapping of social media content.

Monitoring of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and cooperation with LAPD

In 2025, The Intercept revealed that Dataminr tracked pro-Palestinian rallies in Los Angeles, providing the LAPD with notifications about more than 50 events from October 2023 through April 2024, including several alerts issued prior to the gatherings. This collaboration raised questions regarding the company's involvement in overseeing political activism.