US-based data software company Platfora secured $5.7m of series A funding yesterday, from In-Q-Tel (IQT), the venture capital firm backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz.
IQT works as a strategic rather than profit-focused entity, investing in start-ups based around software, infrastructure or material sciences so the CIA can have access to firms’ technology later.
Platfora is creating analytics platforms which use the popular software framework Hadoop to process large quantities of data. Platfora plans to use the capital to expand and accelerate the development of its system.
TJ Rylander, a partner on IQT’s investments team, said: "The big data challenge extends across both the government and commercial markets and we see opportunities for applying Platfora’s innovative approach in both. The advances in the usability of scalable data infrastructure technology that Platfora is developing would have broad applicability for our customers in the US Intelligence Community."