President Donald Trump’s tariffs highlight the increased geopolitical risks that almost every company faces. As the situation continues to carry Trump’s unpredictable deal, it is becoming clear how difficult it will be for businesses, nonprofits, consultants and lawyers to keep up with the rapid changes in everyday life.
“We own trade updates every hour each day,” Matthew Oresman, managing partner at the global law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, told TechCrunch.
The company, whose clients span multinationals and high-class individuals, and the high-tech, energy and AI companies, are one of the first customers of London-based startups and therefore AI’s new software products, and therefore global. Therefore, Global uses AI to enable organizations to monitor geopolitical and business risks.
This tool does two things: First, we advise them on what actions companies of all sizes can take to help track risks and mitigate that risk. Second, service providers such as consulting and law firms can help generate meaningful analyses about the client’s world.
So Sean West, CEO and co-founder of AI (formerly Technologies), says he considers Global “the business advisor who drives the AI you’re riding with.” The base product costs just $1,500 a year, and is therefore much more affordable than Western consultants.
“We want to democratize access to this information,” West told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview, saying that organizations such as startups and NGOs cannot afford to call their lawyers every time they ask about their exposure or spend $500,000 on a consulting agreement.
“Large businesses know how to buy expensive advice, and the wealthiest people always talk to smart people. They pay them,” West continued. “But most markets can actually serve them through technology.”
West previously served as global deputy CEO of the geopolitical advisory firm Eurasia Group, and recently published a book titled “Unruly: Fighting back when politics, AI, and law overturns business rules.” One of his co-founders, Steve Heitkamp, is a Palantier graduate with political risk and counterterrorism backgrounds.
Therefore, Global is built on Palantir’s Foundry and Artificial Intelligence platform, where startups blend a variety of AI models to understand, summarise and analyze relevant information based on their customers’ specific needs and industry. The system draws data from news headlines (and only headlines with links to sources, Wikipedia, Securities and Exchange Commission applications, press releases, sanctions lists and other public data such as World Bank information.
West explained how the product works and showed potential impacts. Customers start by creating personas. For the purposes of the demonstration, we told the system that we are a cross-border cryptocurrency infrastructure company that provides stablecoin payments, crypto custody and regulatory information. He also told Global he wanted a “continuous, future-looking analysis of geopolitical developments that could impact our operational environment,” and would like to provide a handful of topics to track.
The idea is that every day Global generates daily updates with relevant news and information. In the case of fictional crypto companies, one of the stories the software flagged was that Trump’s trade war caused volatility in a market where Bitcoin and other crypto stocks were declining.
“Essentially, mid-level analysts do the work they did in my organization,” West said. He added that Global took analysts all day all day to create notes that churn out in a minute.
Therefore, Global’s daily briefing is great for businesses that want to understand their own geopolitical and business risks, but it is also useful for service companies that are tracking this information for their clients.
Importantly, when a customer requests that a company be monitored globally, the system asks if the company is a client, competitor, or supplier.
“We were desperate for these kinds of tools that could be integrated (information), writing client alerts, giving us a big nucleus of information that we could extend and place legal knowledge,” Olesman said. “There’s an information fire hose there. Something like this actually makes water fountain so you can actually do something convenient.”
So, while Global has not lived for more than a few months, Trump’s tariff situation has already begun to introduce new clients along with existing customers such as Travelperk, Diversifi Capital and the Three Crowns.
Rohitesh Dhawan, CEO of the International Council of Metals and Mining, told TechCrunch that he is using Global to monitor market sentiment and policy.
“We are trying to show the world that it is possible to create mining in a responsible way,” Dhawan said. “But in order to do that, we have to connect very well with the pulsation of society and the things people care about, and the issues of the mind, so we look at it as a way to help it.
Dhawan compared it to Uber Eats globally. This is a product you didn’t need until it showed up and made your life easier. He said companies in resource-based industries such as agriculture and oil and gas, as well as highly regulated or highly public sentiment, such as high-tech startups, will benefit most from using globals.
“This was kind of constant surveillance that we hadn’t done before,” Dhawan said. “So, as CEO, what I’m helping me do is quickly ‘How about it?’
Therefore, Global is the second product of Startup, and Legal is “a solution for external lawyer management, problem management, litigation management,” in the West. Therefore, AI, Rwanda, the US and Netherlands, whose teams spread across the UK, have raised about $5.2 million so far, and are aiming to raise more for this product from investors in line with its mission.
When asked whether AI would be open to being acquired by a large lab, consultant or law firm, West said he and his team were not very interested in going in-house with either organization.
“We’re trying to do something big,” he added. “And I think the big opportunity here is to take away the market for people who are global but have no access to advice. And I don’t think that’s necessarily something that large corporate service providers do.”