MapD directs In-Q-Tel to series A

MapD, a US-based data visualisation software spun out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), yesterday received an undisclosed amount in series A capital from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital firm investing on behalf of the US intelligence community.

MapD earlier raised a series A tranche in April 2016 that was widely reported as $10m in size, though a regulatory filing puts it at $12.1m.

That close was led by Vanedge Capital and featured GV and Verizon Ventures, respective investment arms of conglomerate Alphabet and telecoms firm Verizon, and grapics processing units (GPUs) producer Nvidia.

The company had previously obtained $7.8m for the round in in August 2015, after raising $1.5m in 2014 from GV, Nvidia, Vanedge and assorted angel investors.

Founded in 2013, MapD has created a big data and visual analytics platform that is powered by GPUs. The technology was developed by Todd Mostak and incubated at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

In-Q-Tel will support an accelerated development of certain features of MapD’s technology. The firm has already helped MapD secure contracts with unspecified government agencies, according to the Wall Street Journal.

George Hoyem, managing partner, investments, at In-Q-Tel, said: “MapD is one of the newly emerging software companies leveraging advanced GPU hardware to deliver very impressive performance improvements in data visualisation and data exploration.

“The ability to interact with and visualise billions of data elements in real-time is a transformative capability for our national security partners.”

Todd Mostak, chief executive and co-founder at MapD, said: “The investment by In-Q-Tel validates our pioneering approach of using GPUs to power insight discovery across billion-plus row datasets. This partnership represents an exceptional opportunity to extend our leadership position in the area of analytics.”

– This article first appeared on our sister site Global Government Venturing.