CHEQ Team on a break (Facebook)
CHEQ, an Israeli cyber security startup, and a unicorn, entered into a deal secretly with Elon Musk to prove Twitter (now called X) to reduce the number of fake users on the platform. According to a report in the Israeli business publication Globes, the deal was struck when Musk visited Israel several weeks ago.
The problem facing social media services like Twitter is related to bots. A bot, short for robot, is a software application designed to automate tasks over the internet. They typically imitate human behavior and can be found performing a wide range of activities, from simple tasks like managing social media accounts to complex operations like trading stocks.
But they can also be used to create fake users on different platforms. And Twitter has been ravaged by anonymous users who post all manner of defamatory and even racist Tweets. This increased in the weeks after the Barbaric Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza.
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Elon Musk has been widely criticized for allowing the proliferation of anti-Semitic posts, as well as outright lies about Israel during the ongoing war in Gaza, on his Twitter social media platform. Musk has argued that he is concerned with freedom of speech so he does not wish to censor the posts on Twitter. But his critics have argued that as the operator of the world’s most used messaging platform through which countless people around the world receive news updates, he has a moral obligation to do something about its use for hate speech.
But, at least he sees the problem with bots.
Elon Musk reportedly met secretly with CHEQ’s leaders during his visit to Israel two weeks ago. During the visit, Musk also met with Israeli leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog and toured the towns near Gaza that were devastated in the Hamas attack.
Founded in 2016 by CEO Guy Tytunovich, Chairman Ehud Levy and CTO Asaf Botovsky, graduates of the Israeli Military Defense Intelligence, CHEQ boasts that it is bringing cybersecurity solutions to CMOs and Marketing teams, protecting their customer acquisition efforts from bots, fake users and other forms of invalid traffic. Intel explains that Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) is a small amount of memory on a computer motherboard that stores the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) settings. The BIOS is the software stored on the memory chip on the motherboard. It instructs the computer on how to perform a number of basic functions such as booting and keyboard control. The BIOS is also used to identify and configure hardware in the computer.
CHEQ explains that 40% of all web traffic is made up of bots and invalid users. This affects Go-to-Market efforts by hurting marketing efficiency, disrupting on-site conversion efforts and skewing data and analytics.
CHEQ joined the prestigious unicorn club – a startup with a $1 billion or more valuation, in February 2022 when it raised $150 million in a Series C round led by Tiger Global.
