AI detection startup Pangram has raised $9 million to expand its tools for identifying AI-generated text and images, arriving at a moment when internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare reports that bot traffic has overtaken human traffic on the web for the first time.
The round was led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Haystack, ScOp, Script Capital, and Cadenza. Alongside the fundraising, Pangram launched Pangram 4, a new text detection model it says is over 99% accurate at identifying AI-assisted writing and mixed human-AI content, and released Pangram Image, an AI image detector, in research preview.
Pangram was founded by Stanford AI and machine learning graduates Max Spero and Bradley Emi approximately two years ago. The system works by training a large machine learning model on tens of millions of known human documents, then creating a “synthetic mirror” of each, replicating the topic, length, and tone but written by a frontier AI model. The detector learns the stylistic differences between the two without relying on metadata or hidden watermarks.
The startup distinguishes between fully AI-generated content and AI-assisted writing, where a human wrote the text but used AI to refine it. Users access Pangram via a $20-per-month web subscription or a Chrome extension that labels posts in real time across X, LinkedIn, Substack, Reddit, and Medium. Notable API customers include Substack, which has integrated Pangram to show readers which newsletters are AI-written, as well as Quora, schools, publishers, and recruiters.