Former Google and Meta executive Rob Leathern is returning to the startup world with InfoHawk, a startup focused on detecting and preventing AI-driven deception at internet scale.
He announced on LinkedIn:
“Big news to share: InfoHawk has raised $2.25M in pre-seed funding to detect and neutralize AI-driven deception, scams, and fraud at internet scale.
Scams have quietly become one of the defining threats of the digital age — consumers lost an estimated $442B to them in 2025, and AI is making fraud faster, cheaper, and harder to detect every day. We started InfoHawk to fight back with the kind of independent, data-driven infrastructure the internet actually needs.”
Read more on LinkedIn. (June 8)
The company’s home page reads, “InfoHawk detects, analyzes and neutralizes online deception at scale — giving enterprises a real-time signal on every URL, ad, account, and asset their users encounter.”
Investors include former Meta executive Brad Smallwood, Scope3 CEO Brian O’Kelley and former Google executive Scott Spencer.
Read: InfoHawk Raises $2.25M in Pre-Seed Funding to Detect and Prevent AI-Driven Deception and Scams (June 8) – press release
See: Infohawk’s website
From tipsheet: InfoHawk appears to sit at the intersection of ad fraud, brand safety, cybersecurity and trust & safety. While companies such as DoubleVerify, IAS, HUMAN Security, CHEQ, Mobian and Pixalate emerged from advertising, companies such as Reality Defender focus on deepfake detection and digital authenticity.
One of the most interesting phrases on InfoHawk’s website may be “real-time signal on every URL, ad, account, and asset.” Rather than positioning itself as a point solution for fraud, the company appears to be building a broader trust signal for determining whether digital entities should be trusted.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
- Apple Intelligence brings powerful AI capabilities into everyday experiences (June 8) – Apple
- OpenAI confidentially files for IPO, prepping Wall Street for mega AI debut (June 8) – CNBC
- Amazon Enters Agreement With Corning for Optical Fiber for Data Centers (June 8) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
PLATFORMS
Walmart’s omnichannel advantage
Walmart is increasingly organizing its membership, marketplace, fulfillment, data and advertising businesses at a global level, according to Modern Retail.
After four years at Walmart, Chief Growth Officer Seth Dallaire — who now oversees Walmart+, Walmart Connect, Walmart Data Ventures and the global marketplace platform — says he has developed a greater appreciation for Walmart’s omnichannel advantage after coming from e-commerce-focused companies including Amazon and Instacart.
He continued:
“That’s a very different type of customer occasion that you’re serving when everything is done through a browser or an app. There’s no or very little interaction with the customer in person, and that type of [in-person] relationship is one that Walmart has excelled in.”
Dallaire added that many traditional retailers remain hesitant to build digital businesses that could challenge the models that made them successful. Meanwhile, Walmart has visibility into customer interactions across both physical and digital channels.
Read: “Walmart goes global with its Amazon-like flywheel” (June 8) – Modern Retail
From tipsheet: One of the recurring questions in AI is whether advantage comes from models or from access to customer behavior and outcomes data. Dallaire’s comments are a reminder that Walmart’s opportunity may be less about AI itself and more about the breadth of signals it can observe across stores, e-commerce, membership, fulfillment, advertising and connected TV.
As AI systems become increasingly dependent on feedback loops and outcomes data, companies with visibility into customer behavior across multiple channels may gain an advantage over businesses limited to primarily online interactions.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Podcast: AI shopping could strengthen Amazon
On the latest Mobile Dev Memo podcast, analyst Eric Seufert and Gigi CEO Adam Epstein discussed whether AI shopping experiences can scale without Amazon.
As he has in the past, Seufert argued that independent “agentic commerce” models face structural challenges because commerce remains concentrated among a handful of large platforms. He emphasized, “Amazon won, Walmart won. [OpenAI’s] Instant Checkout was suboptimal on its face. The affiliate model was suboptimal for economic and incentive reasons.”
Looking ahead, Seufert suggested that Amazon could eventually extend its advertising, identity and commerce infrastructure into AI chatbots such as ChatGPT. “They missed social and they’re going to seize the opportunity with chatbots,” he added.
Epstein agreed that large-scale AI commerce may ultimately require partnerships with major commerce platforms saying, “An e-commerce product just simply doesn’t work at scale without being able to have reliable e-commerce data, inventory, catalog, pricing, delivery, that you get from Amazon.”
Epstein added, “The quickest path towards advertising budgets on those two categories [CPG and e-commerce] is to partner with Amazon.”
Listen: “Understanding Amazon’s advertising advantages (with Adam Epstein)” Mobile Dev Memo Podcast (June 4)
From tipsheet: How long until Amazon — or Amazon DSP — starts selling ChatGPT ads to its clients?
By the end of the podcast, you’re left thinking that the introduction of Amazon ad demand into ChatGPT could be imminent.
Much of today’s AI shopping discussion focuses on interfaces such as Amazon’s Rufus or Walmart’s Sparky. Seufert and Epstein are pointing to something deeper: infrastructure. The question may not be whether AI shopping replaces Amazon, but whether AI shopping becomes another surface through which Amazon’s commerce infrastructure operates.
Put another way, and if Seufert is right that AI shopping ultimately depends on commerce infrastructure rather than chatbot interfaces, then the strategic importance of Amazon’s and Walmart’s commerce graphs may increase rather than decrease in an AI-driven market.
DATA
Snowflake customers want to own decisioning
On LinkedIn yesterday, Snowflake Industry Principal Erin Foxworthy shared her top takeaways from last week’s Snowflake Summit including:
- “Unstructured data is the next unlock.”
- “Advanced marketers are winning at composability.”
- “Secure collaboration is getting a massive reboot.”
- “AI needs to be a culture shift.”
Reflecting on conference sessions focused on personalization and decisioning, in particular, Foxworthy wrote:
“Listening to both Tripadvisor (alongside Hightouch) and Morgan Stanley talk about how they are unlocking unprecedented value in personalization by owning decisioning in their own governed data platform was inspiring. Cameras were immediately out when the diagrams showed how to leverage Cortex to build Next Best Action models.”
Read more on LinkedIn. (June 8)
Related: From a company PR last year, Snowflake’s enterprise AI vision emphasized bringing data, AI, governance and decision-making into a single environment (June 2025) – Snowflake
From tipsheet: Historically, decisioning lived inside marketing clouds, customer data platforms (CDPs) and engagement platforms. Foxworthy’s examples suggest some organizations want decisioning to live alongside their data rather than in a separate platform. If so, Snowflake’s role may expand from storing customer data to hosting the models that determine what happens next.
AGENCIES
Accenture bets on creator intelligence
Accenture is acquiring creator and social agency Whalar and folding it into Accenture Song. The deal expands Song’s creator capabilities by helping creators move beyond “one-off brand activations” and become “a more deeply integrated part of customer experiences,” according to Accenture.
Read: “Accenture to Acquire Leading Creator and Social Agency Whalar” (June 8) – Accenture
From tipsheet: The real question here is whether creators are evolving from a media channel into a core component of customer experience design. Accenture’s emphasis on customer experiences suggests a broader role spanning discovery, commerce and product feedback.
Viewed through the feedback-loop lens, creators generate not only content but also customer signals and trust. Accenture appears to be betting that creator intelligence becomes more valuable when integrated into enterprise workflows than when managed as a standalone influencer program.
AGENTS
MCPs reduce platform hopping
With the use of Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers proliferating, Greg McLelland, CRO and Practice Lead for consulting firm Madison and Wall, commented on LinkedIn:
“I find MCPs interesting because they don’t really remove fragmentation in ad buying. However, they do make it easier to work on top of it.
Now you can sit in one interface and prompt across Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon, etc., which is a major shift in day-to-day workflow. A lot of what used to be platform hopping becomes cross-platform decisioning thanks to MCPs.
But the underlying issue hasn’t changed. Each platform still defines performance and attribution inside its own closed system. So even if it feels unified on the surface, you’re still comparing signals that don’t fully line up.
That’s the part that feels important here: MCPs may speed things up, but they don’t necessarily make the underlying data more comparable.”
Read more on LinkedIn. (June 8)
More: What Meta, Google and TikTok’s ads MCP servers mean for media buyers (June 3) – Ad Age (subscription)
From tipsheet: MCPs reduce platform hopping. The bigger question is who owns the decisioning layer above Meta, Google, TikTok and Amazon.
PEOPLE MOVES
Green: Focus on who’s joining, not who’s leaving
“As we continue to scale at The Trade Desk, we’re attracting world-class talent to fuel our next phase of growth and innovation. At the same time, we’re developing amazing talent from within.
Big news is that Vivek Kundra, our COO, is taking on leadership of the revenue organization (previously led by Anders Mortensen). We’re grateful for Anders contribution in the short time he was here.
It’s a natural next step for Vivek, who’s spent the last year at TTD with clients, agencies, and partners. Vivek led a multi-billion-dollar P&L at Salesforce before joining TTD, runs our Client Services org here, and consistently demonstrates how TTD drives growth with clients.
Last week, we shared that Nate Olmstead is joining us following a successful CFO tenure at Penguin Solutions (…)
Rose Tutera, who was the former Chief of Staff for Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio, starts today, and I couldn’t be more excited to have someone with her experience join my office. (…)”
– Jeff Green, CEO, The Trade Desk on LinkedIn (June 8)
Read more on LinkedIn. (June 8)
MORE
- Independent Ad Tech Is Reframing Itself Around Cloud Hardware (June 8) – AdExchanger
- OpenAI to expand ChatGPT ads to new markets & test multi-advertiser placements (June 8) – Search Engine Land
- Opinion: “AI slop reveals what’s been wrong with digital media for 20 years” (June 8) – Adam Heimlich, CEO, Chalice AI on New Digital Age
- Liftoff CEO on the IPO rebound, AppLovin comparisons, and why mobile apps remain an AI growth story (June 8) – Digiday (subscription)
- Opinion: “Did OpenAI Just Kill Its Ads Business?” (June 8) – John Battelle on LinkedIn