Fueled by an $8.1 million funding round, memory augmentation platform Polarity has chosen the D.C. area as its first real home.
The company’s 20 employees currently work remotely, for the most part, with part of its executive team in Connecticut and a handful of workers in a D.C.-based investor’s office.
But as sales ramp up and it exits stealth mode, CEO Paul Battista decided he would need a dedicated headquarters space.
“We have customers in the area, both on the commercial and government side … and we had some early hires in that area, which created the core of the team,” Battista said. “As we hire and grow that core more in DMV area, we’re looking for office space.”
Polarity defines its B2B tech platform as AR without the goggles. It overlays information on a user’s computer screen, adding real-time notations and data gathered from different parts of an enterprise. That allows IT administrators, analysts and security teams to efficiently collaborate, even while in different locations and using different apps.
That app-agnostic approach is one of the startup’s central innovations. Instead of one app gathering data, analyzing and displaying it, the AI platform reads just what’s on employees’ computer screens, providing information and comments from other applications and users.
The latest capital infusion, announced Tuesday, was led by TechOperators and included Shasta Ventures, D.C.-based Strategic Cyber Ventures, Maryland-based Gula Tech Adventures and prominent angel investor Oliver Friedrichs, founder of Phantom.
It follows a $3.5 million Series A round that closed in early 2017. And sales have taken off since then.
Its customers range from a 20-person security service provider to the U.S. federal government. The tech is being used at two of the nation’s top three banks, leading U.S. private equity and healthcare firms and seven members of the Fortune 100.
Polarity plans to use the funding to expand its offerings for smaller clients, in addition to expanding its engineering and sales teams. The deal also adds prestigious backers to its board of directors and advisory board, including former Internet Security Systems CEO Tom Noonan, Endgame co-founder Dan Ingevaldson and former Tenable CEO Ron Gula.
Battista said the raise will also help Polarity double its headcount over 18 months, with plans to add eight to 10 software engineers in the D.C. area. He hasn’t yet chosen a location for the incoming headquarters. Additional sales positions will be filled in other locations.
“Right now, most of our customer acquisition is word of mouth, and having a four-person sales team can support that,” Battista said. “But we’ve had more and more exposure and got a ton of signups in just the last few days, so we’re looking to set up the infrastructure to support that.”
