The CIA is grappling with damning report on its use of torture on detainees in the wake of 9/11. The questions are sure to swirl for some time to come.
But you may be surprised to know that the CIA's activities extend even into the startup world. And, it's worth noting, even those efforts have some detractors.
I'm talking about In-Q-Tel, a venture capital investing unit funded by the CIA since 1999, with the aim of supporting startups whose innovations could help the intelligence sector.
Backing startups in university-rich Boston area has been a major focus for the Arlington, Va.-based firm: In-Q-Tel has a dozen Boston companies in its portfolio (out of 96).
Massachusetts appears to receive a disproportionate amount of attention from In-Q-Tel compared to the tech industries of California and New York, which receive more tech venture funding than Massachusetts overall. In-Q-Tel's portfolio includes just three times as many California companies (36) as Massachusetts companies, and just four New York companies in total.
Boston exits for In-Q-Tel
Some past investments have been major successes, certainly from a business perspective if not from an intelligence one—Endeca (initially funded by In-Q-Tel in 2003) sold to Oracle for more than $1 billion in 2011 and T2 Biosystems (2008 funding) went public this year. Now, another Boston company with funding from In-Q-Tel, cybersecurity firm Veracode (initial funding in 2008), is poised to go public in 2015.
Here are the details on the dozen Massachusetts companies listed in In-Q-Tel's portfolio, with information provided by In-Q-Tel:
908 Devices
- Boston
- Initial Investment: December 2012
- Rapid, handheld mass spectrometry
- 908 Devices is bringing the powerful capabilities of mass spectrometry out of the confines of centralized laboratories. 908 Devices’ products range from rugged, handheld chemical detection tools to compact, dedicated analyzers for researchers, serving a range of industries including safety and security, food science, biotechnology, and clinical diagnostics.
Basis Technology
- Cambridge
- Initial Investment: March 2004
- Foreign language document and media exploitation
- Basis Technology develops innovative products and solutions incorporating multilingual text analytics and digital forensics. The Rosette linguistics platform provides morphological analysis, entity extraction, name matching, name translation, and Arabic chat translation, yielding useful information from unstructured data in such fields as information retrieval, government intelligence, e?discovery, and financial compliance.
InnoCentive
- Waltham
- Initial Investment: March 2010
- Open innovation collaboration platform
- InnoCentive is a global leader in crowdsourcing innovation problems to the world’s smartest people, who compete to provide ideas and solutions to important business, social, policy, scientific, and technical challenges. The company’s global network of millions of problem solvers, proven challenge methodology, and cloud-based technology enable rapid solution delivery and the development of sustainable open innovation programs.
Newlans
- Acton
- Initial Investment: June 2014
- Newlans is building programmable broadband analog signal processing solutions which break the rigidity of today’s Smartphone RF front-ends solving the proliferation of LTE bands while reducing cost, size and power consumption. Newlans’ revolutionary technology enables Smartphone handsets to use a common platform across operators and to add bands without re-design for faster time to market and reduced costs in supply chain, inventory, and distribution.
Protonex
- Southborough
- Initial Investment: September 2013
- Protonex Technology Corporation develops and manufactures intelligent power management and portable fuel cell products for military and commercial markets. Protonex fuel cells are like small lightweight generators, but unlike an internal combustion engine, they are easy to carry, quiet, and don’t produce noxious fumes. The company’s power managers are fully automatic, universal converters/chargers that take whatever energy users have, and make the power they need.
QD Vision
- Lexington
- Initial Investment: March 2008
- Visible emitting quantum dots
- QD Vision is a nanomaterials product company delivering a new generation of display and lighting solutions. QD Vision’s technology harnesses the unique light-emitting properties of a new class of nanomaterials called quantum dots. The company’s advanced materials and components illuminate a broad range of applications, including flat panel displays, solid state lighting systems, and defense and security projects.
Quanterix
- Lexington
- Initial Investment: December 2011
- Single Molecule Array technology
- Quanterix is a developer of ground-breaking tools in high-definition diagnostics. The company’s Simoa platform uses single molecule measurements to access previously undetectable proteins. With this unprecedented sensitivity and full automation, Simoa offers significant benefits to both research and clinical testing applications.
Recorded Future
- Cambridge
- Initial Investment: January 2010
- Temporal analysis engine
- Recorded Future products provide data from more than 250,000 sources, application-specific analytics, and collaboration tools. Recorded Future’s linguistics and statistics algorithms extract time-related information, and through temporal reasoning help users understand relationships between entities and events over time, to form the world’s first temporal analytics engine.
ReversingLabs
- Cambridge
- Initial Investment: December 2011
- Malware analysis and forensic computer investigation
- ReversingLabs develops tools that enable security professionals to analyze high volumes of files to detect malicious code and hidden content in unknown files from computers and mobile devices. TitaniumCore, the company’s automated static decomposition platform, unpacks files of over 150 binary formats and extracts their internal metadata to enable threat detection and determine capabilities and intent.
SiOnyx
- Beverly
- Initial Investment: March 2012
- The black silicon company
- SiOnyx is commercializing a patented semiconductor process that dramatically enhances the sensitivity of silicon-based photonics. SiOnyx’s platform represents a significant breakthrough in the development of smaller, cheaper, high-performing photonic devices in applications ranging from simple light detection to advanced digital imaging and more.
T2 Biosystems
- Cambridge
- Initial Investment: October 2008
- Next generation diagnostics technology
- T2 Biosystems is disrupting the landscape of clinical diagnostics with T2MR, the company’s proprietary magnetic biosensor detector. T2MR technology enables healthcare professionals to save lives and reduce costs by providing sensitive, accurate, and rapid assay results. The company’s products detect molecular, hemostasis, or immunodiagnostic targets directly from unpurified clinical samples in hospitals, labs, and physicians’ offices.
Veracode
- Burlington
- Initial Investment: June 2008
- Software security simplified
- Veracode helps companies and governments address the acute threat posed by hackers who are targeting software vulnerabilities to gain access to critical data. Veracode provides an automated, policy-driven application risk management platform to secure mobile apps, web, and third-party applications across the software supply chain.
