Gilles Raymond is a France-born entrepreneur and the founder and president of the Signals Network, a nonprofit that supports whistleblowers that has received funding from left-of-center organizations including George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF). ^{1 2}

Career

After earning a master’s degree in business from the IPAG Business School in 1994, Gilles Raymond founded Digitug, a company that bought CD-ROMs from major manufacturers for resale. In 1995, Raymond left his company to become an account manager at the Sony Corporation. ²

In 1998, Raymond founded In-Fusio, a mobile phone game company. Between 1998 and 2005, In-Fusio would make roughly €45 million ($47 million) while employing 90, and acquiring three companies. In 2005, Raymond founded and became managing director of Mobilescope, a spin-off of In-Fusio. ²

In 2008, Raymond founded and became the chief executive officer (CEO) of News Republic, a mobile app news company based in Bordeaux, France. which made up to $10.3 million by 2015. In 2016, News Republic was acquired by Cheetah Mobile, a Beijing-based app publisher, for $57 million. That same year, News Republic claimed to have had 12.5 million active users generating roughly three billion views. In 2017, News Republic was sold to ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, for $85 million. In 2018, Raymond left the company. In 2020, ByteDance shut down News Republic along with its two other news apps, TopBuzz and Toutiao. ^{2 3 4 5 6}

From 2014 to 2018, Raymond was a member of the governance board of the Global Editors Network. ²

In 2018, Raymond founded and became the chairman of Letsmeet, an email meeting scheduling service. Raymond left the company in 2023. ²

According to a May 2019 interview, Raymond worked on an instant messaging start-up called do.ne. ⁷

Signals Network

In 2017, Gilles Raymond founded and became president of the Signals Network (also known as the Signals Foundation or Signals Network Foundation), an advocacy group that claims to provide professional, legal, and psychological support to whistleblowers. It has been described as providing a “witness protection scheme” to whistleblowers.” ^{2 7 8}

The Signals Network began with $300,000 of Raymond’s own funds and was later endorsed by Wikimedia founder Jimmy Wales and Edward Snowden. The group has also received funding from several left-of-center organizations including the Open Society Foundations (OSF), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Omidyar Network, Human Rights Watch, Luminate, and The New York Times. ^{2 1 7}

As of December 2024, Raymond remained the president of the Signals Network. ²

Edgee

In November 2023, Gilles Raymond co-founded and became co-CEO of Edgee, a data collection and analytics service. ²

1. “Donors and Financials.” The Signals Network. Accessed December 3, 2024. https://thesignalsnetwork.org/donors-financials/.
2. “Gilles RAYMOND.” LinkedIn. Accessed December 3, 2024. https://www.linkedin.com/in/gillesraymondmobile/.
3. Dillet, Romain. “Cheetah Mobile acquires News Republic for $57 million.” Tech Crunch. August 2, 2016. Accessed December 3, 2024. https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/cheetah-mobile-has-acquired-news-republic-for-57-million/.
4. Delouya, Samantha. “TikTok’s parent company ByteDance bought a private hospital chain that offers a $32,000 VIP birthing package. See more of the Chinese company’s curious investments.” Business Insider. September 13, 2022. Accessed December 3, 2024. https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-bytedance-owner-china-investments-li-auto-see-list-2022-9.
5. Anne Salz, Peggy. “Q&A: Gilles Raymond, News Republic Founder and CEO.” Digital Content Next. January 27, 2016. Accessed December 3, 2024. https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2016/01/27/qa-gilles-raymond-news-republic-founder-and-ceo/.
6. Kohil-Khandekar, Vanita. “No global conversation is complete without India: Gilles Raymond.” Business Standard. August 27, 2015. Accessed December 3, 2024. https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/no-global-conversation-is-complete-without-india-gilles-raymond-115082700013_1.html
7. Filloux, Frederic. ““The Signals” Wants to Be a Full Ecosystem for Whistleblowers.” Medium. May 19, 2019. Accessed December 3, 2024. https://mondaynote.com/the-signals-wants-to-be-a-full-ecosystem-for-whistleblowers-ab474321f798.
8. Heighton, Luke; Adams, Callum. “New ‘witness protection scheme’ for whistle-blowers exposing technology industry ‘wrongdoing’.” The Telegraph. June 21, 2018. Accessed December 3, 2024. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/21/new-witness-protection-scheme-whistle-blowers-exposing-technology/