• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, August 15, 2022

David Benigson, CEO Signal AI, recently announced the acquisition of KELP, founded by Dan Gaynor and Shann Biglione, which focuses on quantifying the impact of company actions on reputation. 

The two companies focus on helping organizations to understand external events around data that impact success.  

“The acquisition strengthens our long-term vision and mission, which is to transform how business leaders make decisions through the use of data to get a head of risks and opportunities and correct strategies,” Benigson said. “For the C-Suite, we believe it will augment decision making through data.”

Benigson, who initially wanted to become a politician in high school, created Signal AI with Miguel Martinez about nine years ago in a garage in London, “where all good companies are founded.”

Remember Apple, Amazon, Disney, Google, Hewlett-Packard, and many others -- all founded behind garage doors.

Three major trends pushed them to create the company — the explosion of unstructured information and availability of data, a complex interconnected world and challenges that organizations must face due to political instability to the crisis in Ukraine and the emergence of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

With the acquisition, Signal AI continues to build a platform to provide data and insights to help mitigate risks, issues and threats. It does this by aggregating unstructured data from news and social media, regulatory and broadcast data, product reviews and a company’s internal data. The technology measures and quantifies the performance from a reputation perspective.  

KELP, founded by Gaynor and Biglione, will remain a stand-alone company. It has a strong presence in industries like Healthcare & Life Sciences, as well as Aerospace & Defense. 

The co-founders, Gaynor and Biglione, will join Signal AI, along with the company’s approximately 10 employees. Signal AI has about 220 employees.

Gaynor previously worked as the head of communications for Nike, and as a presidential appointee in the Obama administration. Biglione is the former head of strategy at Publicis Media, working for brands like GSK, Walt Disney Studios, and Verizon.

They built an indexing capability that takes data from Signals AI’s platform and enables them to benchmark and score how companies perform based on reputation.

“The acquisition should add between 5% and 10% to top line revenue this year,” Benigson said.