Intrinsic, a startup founded by former Apple engineers Karine Mellata and Michael Lin, has raised $3.1 million in a seed round with backing from prominent investors including Y Combinator, Urban Innovation Fund, 645 Ventures, and Okta. The duo, who previously worked in Apple's fraud engineering and algorithmic risk team, identified the need for a more adaptive and advanced approach to combating online abuse issues such as spam, botting, account security, and developer fraud. In response to growing regulatory pressure for centralized trust and safety responses, Mellata and Lin co-founded Intrinsic with a vision to modernize the industry and contribute to building a safer internet.

Intrinsic's platform is tailored for both user- and AI-generated content moderation, offering tools to empower safety teams in detecting and addressing content violations. Primarily targeting social media companies and e-commerce marketplaces, Intrinsic automates tasks like user bans and content flagging, providing a customizable AI content moderation platform. Mellata emphasizes Intrinsic's unique features of explainability and extensive tooling, allowing customers to understand and fine-tune moderation decisions. Despite competition from platforms like Spectrum Labs, Azure, and Cinder, Intrinsic stands out with its focus on flexibility, adaptability, and cost-effectiveness for resource-constrained trust and safety teams.

With a notable presence in the enterprise sector, Intrinsic has secured contracts with "large, established" customers in the "six-figure" range on average. The startup's near-term plans include expanding its three-person team and extending its moderation technology to cover video and audio content. Mellata sees Intrinsic as well-positioned in a tech landscape emphasizing automation for trust and safety, addressing the concerns of Chief Operating Officers and Chief Compliance Officers by offering a faster, more cost-effective solution that effectively addresses abuse in various forms.