Enigma Labs is a New York City-based, venture-backed startup that operates what it describes as the world's largest queryable, scored UAP database, aggregating over 400,000 civilian and military sighting reports through a combination of historical records and live crowdsourced submissions via a mobile app.1 The company was incorporated as a Delaware LLC on December 1, 2020, and publicly launched in early 2022, positioning itself at the intersection of civic data infrastructure and emerging government interest in unidentified aerial phenomena.
Founding and Platform
The company was founded by Alex Smith (also identified in some sources as Alice Lloyd George), who identified a gap in credible, accessible infrastructure for UAP data collection and community engagement.2 Enigma's platform accepts sighting reports through its iOS and Android apps, automatically stripping submissions of personally identifying information before a human review team evaluates each entry. The company reports accepting approximately 50% of submissions, with accepted reports published to an interactive map and cross-referenced with historical records.3
As of 2023–2024, the platform had received over 50,000 reports from global users and distributed more than 560,000 real-time sighting alerts.4 The founding team of approximately 14 full-time employees draws from backgrounds in data science, machine learning, aerospace, particle physics, journalism, military service, and public policy.
Technology and Scoring System
Enigma's core differentiator is an AI-based anomaly scoring system applied to each accepted report. Machine learning models assess submissions against identifiable variables — known aircraft, celestial bodies, and light phenomena — and assign each sighting a numerical anomaly score intended to surface the most statistically unusual cases.5 As of interviews in 2023, the scoring system was described as still in beta.
The platform also incorporates sensor fusion capabilities and phone metadata triangulation to corroborate sightings, and has released augmented reality tools to help witnesses distinguish known objects from genuinely unidentified ones.6 These features are intended to reduce false-positive submissions and improve overall data quality before reports are made available to researchers and the public.
Government and Institutional Engagement
Enigma has cultivated ties with government and scientific bodies. The company participated in a NASA UAP summit in January 2023, and the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) conducted a technical evaluation of Enigma's data and crowdsourcing capabilities.5 NASA's own UAP task force subsequently recommended crowdsourcing as a solution for UAP reporting, a conclusion consistent with Enigma's existing product approach.7
Former U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Alex Dietrich — publicly known as a witness to the 2004 USS Nimitz encounter — joined Enigma as an advisor in November 2022.5 Head of research and content Alejandro Rojas, a veteran UAP journalist, represented the company at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in 2023.6 Academic attention has come from Dr. Kate Dorsch of the University of Pennsylvania, who discussed Enigma's data-collection methodology for WIRED Magazine, noting that social, political, and cultural backgrounds can affect the quality of UAP data.8
Funding and Investors
Enigma received seed funding in June 2022.1 Investors include Kindred Ventures, Haystack Fund, FJ Labs, Dria Ventures, Stellation Capital, and Centre Street Partners. The total funding amount has not been publicly disclosed.9
Assessment
Several aspects of Enigma's claims and operations remain unverified or contested. The company's founder maintains a deliberately low public profile, and independent verification of the claimed 400,000-plus database records has not been published. The AI anomaly scoring methodology has not been peer-reviewed, and the AARO technical evaluation has produced no published results. Critics in community forums have also raised concerns about Enigma's subscription model, which charges users to access AI-analyzed data that was crowdsourced for free, and about the opacity of the company's leadership.
Comparable crowdsourced UAP platforms have historically struggled with data quality, hoax submissions, and confirmation bias in user communities. Enigma's own acceptance rate of approximately 50% and its beta-stage scoring system indicate the platform is still maturing as a scientific resource. Until the scoring methodology is independently audited and database provenance is documented publicly, the platform's outputs should be treated as preliminary rather than authoritative.