Crowd Threat, a threat intelligence startup in Newcastle, England, has secured £1M to expand its network of local reporters and the countries it covers. The company collects reports of armed conflict, terrorist attacks, social unrest and crime from people on the ground, then checks them before passing the data on.
The money came from the North East Accelerate Fund, managed by Mercia Ventures, and from NPIF II – PXN Equity Finance, which PXN Ventures manages as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II (NPIF II).
The startup plans to use the funding to widen coverage in Africa, South America and Asia, grow its network to as many as 10,000 contributors and create seven jobs.
Paid Reporters On The Ground
Threat intelligence is information that helps organisations understand dangers to their people, sites and supply chains. Many providers gather it with desk-based analysts who monitor news, social media and data feeds from afar.
Crowd Threat instead pays people on the ground for each incident they report. Its contributors are usually security or intelligence professionals based in the areas they cover. The company says this costs less and catches threats closer to where they happen. It counts more than 200 contributors across 17 countries on six continents.
Using local people who understand the language and culture lets the company report incidents more quickly and spot threats that Western analysts may miss, said Michael McCabe, the founder and chief executive. “If an explosive device went off in the morning, by the end of the day we would know all the background,” he said.
Each report gets an initial rating based on how much the company trusts the contributor who filed it. AI tools then help sort and categorise the report, and human analysts verify each one.
Crowd Threat is aiming at governments, security firms and companies protecting staff and supply chains overseas. Customers can view incidents on a dashboard or pull them into their own systems. The company also plans a second product to flag rising tension within communities and give early warning of riots and violence.
Founder’s Second Threat Intelligence Startup
McCabe is a former British Army intelligence operator. He spent more than two decades in intelligence work with the military and with private security companies in Iraq.
Before Crowd Threat, he ran Intelligence Fusion, a threat intelligence data and software company in Durham, England. US risk services group Sigma7 bought the business in August 2022 for an undisclosed sum.
Crowd Threat followed in 2025, with McCabe building its platform alongside Wubbleyou, a software company in Newcastle.
Regional Funds Behind The Round
The North East Accelerate Fund is a £35M fund that invests up to £1M in early-stage companies. It was set up by the £350M North East Fund with support from North East Mayor Kim McGuinness and the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority.
The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II is a £660M programme from the British Business Bank, the UK government’s economic development bank. The fund launched in 2024 to provide loans and equity to smaller businesses across the North of England.
Laurence Tan, senior investment associate at PXN Ventures, said Crowd Threat was “bringing new thinking to the threat intelligence conversation”.
Crowd Threat now has £1M to take its crowd-based model further, under a founder who has built and sold a threat intelligence business before. Growing from more than 200 contributors towards 10,000 means recruiting and vetting thousands more local reporters while keeping the data reliable for the organisations that use it.
