NewsWhip, the real-time media intelligence company trusted by global brands and leading publishers, has announced the launch of the first AI Monitoring Agent designed to monitor the world's news, detect narrative and business risks as they emerge, and provide alerts and context to help communications teams decide when and how to respond.

Today, NewsWhip is used by major global brands including Google, Nissan, Walmart, Deloitte, and Cigna; and by leading publishers such as Axios, Reuters, The Associated Press, DotDash Meredith, and Condé Nast. Backed by investors including the Associated Press, Tribal VS and Asahi Shimbun, NewsWhip has raised over $20 million to date to build a next-generation media intelligence platform. The development of the AI Monitoring Agent was requested and financially supported by one of the world's leading beverage brands, reflecting a growing demand for faster, smarter solutions in real-time media monitoring.

In the modern media landscape, communications teams are stretched across a constant churn of headlines, viral tweets, Slack threads, podcasts, and newsletters. According to the Reuters Institute's 2024 Digital News Report, as media habits fragment, just 22% of people now go directly to news websites or apps while the majority rely on platforms like social media, search, and aggregators to access news, highlighting a generational shift away from traditional news.

At the same time, research by Dr. Gloria Mark, professor of informatics at UC Irvine, shows that professionals switch tasks every 47 seconds and can take up to 25 minutes to regain focus. In this environment of constant cognitive overload, PR teams are flooded with noise. NewsWhip helps them stay ahead tracking real-time engagement across platforms and predicting what will matter to their brand's reputation..

With reputational risk now spread across hundreds of channels, traditional monitoring can't keep up. Agentic AI is becoming the obvious answer. Gartner predicts that by 2029, 80% of common service issues will be resolved by AI agents without human input. In communications, NewsWhip is bringing this shift to life - developing more agentic AI solutions to surface early signals, add real-time context, and help comms teams prioritise what actually matters. That means less time reacting to noise, and more time shaping strategy.

"Agentic AI will transform the game for brand and issue monitoring. We expect PR and comms professionals will quickly shift from daily or other periodic media reports, to trusting their "always on" Agent team-mate - telling them what they need to know, when they need to know it.," said Paul Quigley, CEO and co-founder of NewsWhip. "Our Agent stands on the shoulders of NewsWhip's unique real time news and social engagement data - so it brings together the speed of the newsroom with the trusted capability of a media analyst. Ultimately, this will empower communications professionals to act faster, make better decisions, and help their organisations succeed."

Major brands are already seeing the benefit of NewsWhip's AI monitor with Benjamin Kocsis, Global Communications Insight Analyst at Ford Motor Company saying, "We are eager to leverage AI more to enhance our insights and drive efficiency. To have an Agent in NewsWhip that allows us to constantly be on the lookout for reputational risks and opportunities is invaluable as we look to provide our teams with information on what matters most to our key stakeholder groups and more effectively manage our reputation."

Unlike conventional media monitoring tools, which focus on keyword mentions and update on a delay, NewsWhip was purpose-built for today's fragmented, non-linear media environment. It tracks engagement in real time across both mainstream and emerging sources - including Facebook, Reddit, and platforms many tools overlook, like Substack.

At the core is a high-frequency data engine that indexes millions of stories per hour - combined with a transformational...