As the trade war escalates, Hence launches an AI ‘advisor’ to help companies manage risk

President Donald Trump's tariffs have thrown a spotlight on the escalating geopolitical risks that businesses are navigating today. As Trump's unpredictable deal-making continues to shift the landscape, it's becoming increasingly difficult for companies, nonprofits, consultants, and lawyers to stay on top of the rapid changes happening on a daily basis.

Matthew Oresman, the London managing partner of global law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, expressed the overwhelming nature of the situation to TechCrunch, saying, "We are drowning in trade updates every hour of every day." The firm, which serves a diverse clientele from multinationals to tech, energy, and AI companies, is among the first to adopt Hence AI's new software product, Hence Global. This innovative tool leverages AI to help organizations keep tabs on geopolitical and business risks.

Hence Global serves two primary functions. Firstly, it enables companies of all sizes to monitor risks and provides recommendations on how to mitigate them. Secondly, it assists service providers, such as consulting and law firms, in creating insightful analyses for their clients.

Sean West, CEO and co-founder of Hence AI (formerly Hence Technologies), describes Hence Global as "an AI-powered business advisor that’s riding alongside you." Priced at a competitive $1,500 per year for the basic version, West argues that Hence offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional consultants. In an exclusive interview with TechCrunch, he emphasized their mission to "democratize access to this information," noting that many organizations, including startups and NGOs, cannot afford constant legal or consulting fees.

"Big companies know how to buy expensive advice, and the richest people will always talk to the smartest people, and they’ll pay for them," West remarked. "But most of the market can actually be served by technology."

West, who previously served as global deputy CEO of geopolitical advisory firm Eurasia Group and authored the book "Unruly: Fighting Back when Politics, AI, and Law Upend the Rules of Business," co-founded Hence AI with Steve Heitkamp, a former Palantir employee with expertise in political risk and counterterrorism.

Hence Global is built on Palantir’s Foundry and Artificial Intelligence Platform, allowing it to integrate various AI models to understand, summarize, and analyze information tailored to a customer's specific needs and industry. The system aggregates data from news headlines, Wikipedia, Securities and Exchange Commission filings, press releases, and other public data sources like sanctions lists or World Bank information.

During a demonstration, West illustrated the product's functionality. Users start by creating a persona. For the demo, we were a cross-border cryptocurrency infrastructure company focusing on stablecoin payments, crypto custody, and regulatory intelligence. We instructed Hence Global to provide "a continuous, forward-looking analysis of geopolitical developments that could impact our operating environment" and specified several topics to track.

Each day, Hence Global generates a daily update with relevant news and insights. For instance, it flagged a story about how Trump’s trade war led to market volatility, affecting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. West noted that the software performs tasks equivalent to those a mid-level analyst would do, but in a fraction of the time. "Basically, it does the work that a mid-level analyst would have done in my organization," he said, adding that it could take an analyst all day to produce what Hence Global does in a minute.

The daily briefings from Hence Global are invaluable not just for companies looking to understand their risks but also for service providers who monitor this data for their clients. Importantly, when monitoring a company, Hence Global asks whether it is a client, competitor, or supplier, which influences how it processes and presents the information and analyses.

Oresman highlighted the necessity of such tools, stating, "We were desperate for these kinds of tools that can synthesize [information], help us write the client alerts, give us that big kernel of information that we can augment and put our legal knowledge on. There’s just a fire hose of information out there. Having something like this actually gets it to a water fountain so we can actually do something useful with it."

Though Hence Global has only been live for a short time, Trump's tariff situation has already attracted new clients, in addition to existing ones like TravelPerk, Diversifi Capital, and Three Crowns.

Rohitesh Dhawan, CEO of the International Council on Metals and Mining, shared with TechCrunch how he uses Hence Global to monitor market sentiment and policy. "We try to show the world that it is possible to produce mining in a responsible way," Dhawan explained. "But to do that, you’ve got to be really well connected to the pulse of society and what people care about and the issues that are top of mind, and that’s why we turn to Hence as a way to help us do that, because things are just moving so quickly in the world in general."

Dhawan compared Hence Global to Uber Eats, a service you might not realize you need until it simplifies your life. He believes that companies in resource-based industries, like agriculture or oil and gas, and those that are heavily regulated or influenced by public sentiment, such as tech startups, would find Hence Global particularly useful.

"This was the kind of always-on monitoring that we just weren’t doing before," Dhawan said. "What Hence is helping me do as a CEO is to quickly get to the, ‘So what?’"

Hence Global is Hence AI's second product, following Hence Legal, which focuses on outside counsel management, matter management, and litigation management, according to West. Hence AI, with its team distributed across the U.K., Rwanda, the U.S., and the Netherlands, has raised about $5.2 million to date and is actively seeking more investment for this product from mission-aligned investors.

When questioned about potential acquisitions by larger research houses, consultancies, or law firms, West indicated that his team is more focused on broader market impact than becoming part of a single organization. "We’re trying to do big things," he said. "And I think the big opportunity here is tapping the market of people who are global, but can’t access advice. And I don’t think that necessarily is what a large corporate service provider would do with this."