TextDigger Adds $4.3 Million

TextDigger Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based semantic search startup, has raised $4.3 million in Series A-1 funding. True Ventures led the round, and was joined by CBS Interactive and Intel Capital. The company previously raised $3.8 million.

 

PRESS RELEASE

TextDigger, Inc., a semantic profiling, text mining, and search tools company, announced the closing of a US $4.3 million round of venture capital funding. The series A-1 round was led by True Ventures (San Francisco, CA) with a follow on investment from Intel Capital (Santa Clara, CA). Also participating were CBS Interactive (formerly CNET Networks) and several leading angel investors.

TextDigger will use the funding to develop and market its semantic profiling, hosted search and automated tagging solutions in the online publishing and e-commerce sectors, expanding its sales and marketing presence within the U.S.

TextDigger’s advanced semantic services increase the findability of web pages, both internally within a site and externally on major search engines. The advanced semantic technology can disambiguate the various meanings of words, and can match queries to web pages where different words are used to describe the same idea. The results are better search results, increased ad inventory, and longer user sessions.

Commenting on the investment round, Tim Musgrove, CEO of TextDigger, stated, “The strong positive reactions to our beta trials last year led to a renewed investor interest in our company. We are proud to have attracted three industry leaders who, between them, possess vast talent across technology marketing, digital media production, and the management of start-ups.”

Phil Black of True Ventures commented, “The time has come when every company owning large amounts of Web-based content wants a smarter tool to optimize that content, so that every bit of value in it is delivered to their customers. TextDigger is uniquely qualified to provide such services, and we believe that any site which has its own search can benefit right now from working with TextDigger.”

Eghosa Omoigui of Intel Capital commented, “Content publishers are fast realizing that their current methods of connecting web users to timely and relevant information, such as collaborative filtering and community recommendations, may not solve the whole problem. TextDigger has developed software tools to help give consumers a better grasp on web content, the volume of which is dramatically increasing. The company’s unique approach has enormous potential in this growing space.”

About TextDigger, Inc.

TextDigger is a San Jose, CA-based startup developing advanced semantic solutions for the Web, including hosted semantic search, automated content tagging and topic generation, and optimized keyword generation. These products make Web pages more findable, both to outside search engines such as Google and to other pages within the same site via cross-linking and related search. The result is increased revenue from higher inbound traffic and longer sessions. TextDigger was founded by a group of former CNET employees and executives who developed patented linguistic technologies that, today, are used to enhance the content on thousands of pages within CNET’s award winning websites.

About True Ventures

True Ventures invests in promising entrepreneurs at the earliest stages in the highest-growth segments of the technology market. The Partners at True have started over ten companies as founders, and True is designed by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs. The firm clearly understands both opportunities and challenges in the earliest stage of development and provides young companies with a powerful, seasoned partner.

About Intel Capital

Intel Capital, Intel’s global investment organization, makes equity investments in innovative technology start-ups and companies worldwide. Intel Capital invests in a broad range of companies offering hardware, software, and services targeting enterprise, home, mobility, health, consumer Internet, semiconductor manufacturing and cleantech. Since 1991, Intel Capital has invested more than US$7.5 billion in approximately 1,000 companies in 45 countries. In that timeframe, 168 portfolio companies have gone public on various exchanges around the world and 212 were acquired or participated in a merger. In 2008, Intel Capital invested about US$1.59 billion in 169 investments with approximately 62 percent of funds (excluding Clearwire) invested outside North America. For more information on Intel Capital and its differentiated advantages, visit http://www.intelcapital.com

For more information on TextDigger’s semantic solutions, please visit textdigger.com