High Tech Company to Move to Connecticut as a Result of CI
Investment
Rocky Hill, Conn.,
September 18, 2008 – Connecticut Innovations (CI), the state’s
quasi-public authority responsible for technology investing and innovation
development, today announced that it has made an investment of $1 million in
Semantifi Inc. CI’s investment is part of a $2.2 million Series A round also
involving existing angel investors and LaunchCapital. The company is in
the process of relocating from Tarrytown, New York, to Connecticut.
“We are excited about the
investment and the network of relationships the investor syndicate brings to
Semantifi,” said Shree Pragada, chief executive officer of Semantifi. “This investment
accelerates Semantifi's plan to deliver semantic search applications across
enterprise business intelligence and consumer verticals.”
Semantifi
has developed a cutting edge search platform that helps business users retrieve
relevant, meaning-based results from both structured databases and unstructured
repositories, such as email and file systems. Beginning with natural
language or keyword questions from the user, Semantifi’s technology rapidly and
seamlessly searches digital information and – in seconds – produces reports
containing a narrow field of highly relevant results, not thousands of partially
relevant hits. Semantifi has successfully proven this technology with Fortune 100
customers.
“We are pleased to have
played a role in bringing such an innovative company to Connecticut,” said Peter
Longo, president and executive director of CI. “Semantifi’s ground-breaking
technology impressed us from the start as did its noteworthy customer list,
which continues to grow. The company’s intelligent search platform is the
only tool in the market offering meaning-based search capabilities, making it
faster and far more user-friendly for businesses to retrieve information.”
The New Haven office of
LaunchCapital is also participating in the Series A round of financing for
Semantifi.
Longo said, “We are also
delighted to be investing alongside LaunchCapital for the first time and look
forward to partnering with the firm in the future to support pre-seed and
seed-stage tech ventures in Connecticut.”
Governor M. Jodi Rell said,
“Semantifi is a wonderful addition to Connecticut’s growing technology community
and to Connecticut Innovations’ dynamic portfolio – which now includes more than
40 outstanding early-stage ventures. With Connecticut Innovations’ funding
and guidance, Semantifi will be well-positioned to succeed in our state and to
create new, high-paying jobs for our citizens.”
Semantifi is the eighth
company to have been recruited to Connecticut by CI in the past two years.
About Connecticut Innovations,
Inc.
Connecticut Innovations (CI) is a quasi-public organization
dedicated to driving a vibrant, entrepreneurial, technology-based economy in
Connecticut. CI stimulates high-tech growth by investing in: early-stage
Connecticut technology companies; university/industry research collaborations;
technology transfer; and clean energy initiatives through the Connecticut Clean
Energy Fund. CI also fosters collaboration among government, business,
nonprofit and academic organizations to advance technology growth and promotes
public policies consistent with CI’s mission. For more information on CI,
please visit www.ctinnovations.com.
About Semantifi
Inc.
Semantifi is a meaning based search platform with a unique
capability to search both documents and databases. With Semantifi, business and
Internet users can ask simple English language or keyword questions to get
relevant search results. When searching databases, Semantifi responds in seconds to
offer multiple presentation-ready charts and reports.
With numerous search
applications, Semantifi is focusing on select enterprise and consumer verticals and
is working to license its technology to third parties for a variety of other
verticals.
Semantifi gets its name from
its vision to enable everyone to execute their ideas or cues through
meaning-based search. For more information, please visit www.execue.com.
