Natural language processing startup Idibon has secured $5.5 million in Series A funding.
Idibon works on machine learning and natural language in order to understand language faster, accurately, and at a fraction of the cost of current technologies. Its language processing tools are adaptive to complex uses, for instance, “from predicting future purchase intent via social media to measure campaign effectiveness in Portuguese, to creating a database about car features from disparate sources in English.”
“At Idibon, we empower our clients to extract the information that matters most to them,” explained Robert Munro, Idibon chief executive and co-founder. “Idibon is passionate about helping organizations unlock the information in our rapidly connecting world, from helping make smart phones smarter to helping UNICEF extract information in dozens of languages in Africa — all with the same technology.”
Idibon has also worked with Edmunds.com, Samsung, and other global consulting firms. Having worked with text from sources in more than 50 languages, new funding will help it support more languages.
“We’re seeing a lot of just unmet demand,” Munro told VentureBeat in an interview.
The round saw investments from Altpoint Ventures LP, Khosla Ventures, and Morningside, with participation from Samsung and Inventec. Vadim Tarasov of Altpoint will join Khosla on Idibon’s board of directors, strengthening their global impact.
Founded in January 2014, and based in San Francisco, California, Idibon has raised $6.9 million so far and has a dozen employees working full-time along with 50 part-time analysts around the globe. The team should hit 30 full-timers within a year, Munro told VB.
Read more here
(Image Credit: DAVID MELCHOR DIAZ)
