Geollect is one of 10 companies chosen to take part in a special mentoring programme being run by the UK’s intelligence, security and cyber agency.

The aim of the scheme is to develop creative products based on data science, machine learning and AI techniques that have the potential to help communities and businesses.

A GCHQ spokesperson said the programme will play a crucial role in helping to keep UK businesses and consumers safe:

“This 12-week programme will give these companies, using cutting-edge tech, unique access to GCHQ technologists to help hone their products – from helping to prevent the spread of fake news to countering people trafficking,” they added.

The GCHQ Innovation Co-Lab is a joint venture with The Landing, a tech mentorship hub based in MediaCityUK in Greater Manchester and global tech accelerator UP Ventures.

Emer Coleman, project director at Up Accelerator said: “Our goal is to help emerging businesses make technical and commercial breakthroughs with their ingenious products and services by giving them access to world-class GCHQ technologists as well as industry experts and dedicated coaches.”

As part of the programme, Geollect will be working with GCHQ software engineers and technologists to further develop an innovative media insight and sentiment analysis tool called MOSAIC. The platform uses machine learning to process vast amounts of open source data to provide insights into sources of information in society and understand the spread of fake news.

Geollect specialises in using machine learning and geospatial intelligence techniques to aggregate, analyse and visualise vast amounts of data. They work with customers in defence, cruise lines and insurance to develop technical solutions that simplify complexity and provide actionable insights.

CEO Cate Gwilliam said the company’s selection represents a huge opportunity to learn from some great minds, “we want to use this as a springboard to scale our machine learning solutions to the next level and make a real difference in the UK and the US; we’ve generated significant interest in MOSAIC and we are excited to use the Co-Lab to further validate our capabilities.”

The Co-Lab has come at a great time for Geollect, “this is a really exciting time for us” said Cate, “we are continuing to grow within Defence, entering a Series A funding round in the next few weeks, and are also participating in an accelerator scheme with Lloyd’s of London.”

Details of the full cohort of companies set to receive mentorship services can be found here.