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March 5, 2013

Enigma.io Claims to Demystify Data; Receives Round

Isaac Lopez

As endless streams of information are being released into the open wild, being able to decipher and make the data useful is a very real and present challenge. New York start-up, Enigma.io says that they are up for it, claiming the ability to synthesize and make sense of all this disparate data and have reportedly been granted $1.1 million dollars in venture equity seed money to take their project to the next level.

Enigma.io says that they’ve been “harmonizing and indexing” over 100,000 public data sources published by governments, companies, and organizations around the globe, and say that users can query across these siloed data sets from a single interface.  Examples of data sources the company cites include everything from lobbying, financial filings, government spending, patents, etc.

“Access everything from import bills of lading, to aircraft ownership, lobbying activity, real estate assessments, spectrum licenses, financial filings, liens, government spending contracts and much, much more,” boasts the startup.

Global finance dynamos, TriplePoint Capital and Crosslink capital are literally buying into the hype and have joined with former YouTuber, Brent Hurley, Take Two chair, Strauss Zelnick, and Matthew Glass of Colbeck Capital to help make the Enigma.io concept a reality. 

The idea shows clear promise as more and more organizations, and especially governments, have picked up the mantra towards “democratizing data,” by releasing their feeds onto accessible web portals.  New York City passed landmark “open data” legislation last year, and recently Mayor Bloomberg has put out the call for the creation of a municipal program to take advantage of this data for improving emergency and disaster recovery needs.  Being able to access and analyze this data from a single interface could go a long ways towards increasing the time to solution where projects like this are concerned.

But simple access to this data isn’t the only benefit that Enigma.io claims to offer.  The startup says that users will have the ability to augment their data with comparisons and correlations between events, geographies and transactions, as well as provide API access to their carefully sanitized and curated data sets.  The company will also offer API services to their relational engine and the NLP technologies that empower the Enigma engine.

Currently in a closed beta stage, the company has not yet revealed pricing but hint at a rate structure that includes single user licenses with unlimited exports, and enterprise licensing options that include services such as hosting and integration with proprietary data – as well as a metered pricing structure for REST and streaming APIs.

 

Related Articles:

New York City Calls in the Code Corps 

Helping the Government Survive the Data Tsunami 

Top Funded Big Data Startups 

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