Who Is The CIA Investing In?

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We’ve written recently about Skincential Sciences, a skincare manufacturer with a curious financial backer: the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This is not the only company the agency’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, invests in.

The Intercept obtained a brochure from IQT’s CEO Summit that details what the CIA is investing in, and the what it shows is very interesting.

One of the areas the agency seems particularly interested in is social media activity tracking. IQT has invested in at least two companies that specialise in this activity: Dataminr and Geofeedia.

Dataminr uses machine learning to delve deep into the open social world of the internet on Twitter and similar data sources to identify trends and tweets with impact. Their algorithms look for “clusters” of similar tweets, and it seems that it works. Dataminr notified clients of the Paris attacks last November just five minutes after they occurred. It took the AP some 45 minutes to tweet about it themselves.

Geofeedia has a slightly different approach. The company collects geotagged social media messages to identify and monitor breaking news in real time.

Databricks is another IQT beneficiary. Their product, Spark, was described by IBM as one of “the most significant open source project of the next decade.” And for good reason. Business Insider reports that Spark can sort through enormous data sets incredibly fast, leaving many of its competitors far behind.

Orbital Insight, which recently raised $8.7m in capital, is also on the list. They specialise in satellite image processing – something the CIA has an inherent interest in. They’re not the only ones, however. The World Bank is among the company’s clients, as reported by Fortune.