Expect Labs, which recently came out of stealth to announce a voice and video calling app for the iPad that understands conversations in real-time, has raised $2.4 million in funding from KPG Ventures, IDG Ventures, Google Ventures, Greylock Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Quest Venture Partners. Several individual investors, including Naval Ravikant, Gil Elbaz and Don Hutchison, also invested. The San Francisco-based company expects to release its app, called MindMeld, in late October. As part of the funding, Vince Vannelli, managing partner of KPG Ventures, has joined the board. Alex Rosen, managing director of IDG Ventures, was named a board observer. Expect Labs is led by CEO Tim Tuttle, who previsouly founded video search engine Truveo, which AOL later acquired.
PRESS RELEASE
Expect Labs Announces Backing from Heavyweight Investors to Scale Technology Platform for Understanding Conversations in Real-Time
Closes a $2.4M Investment from Investors Including Google Ventures and Greylock Partners
SAN FRANCISCO- (October 4, 2012) – Expect Labs, TechCrunch Disrupt finalist and creator of the iPad app MindMeld, is announcing today that it has closed a $2.4 million investment from a list of industry heavyweights and top-tier venture capital firms. Expect Labs’ backers include KPG Ventures, IDG Ventures, Google Ventures, Greylock Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Quest Venture Partners and several well-known angel investors including Naval Ravikant, Gil Elbaz and Don Hutchison.
Expect Labs emerged from stealth mode last month when they were selected from among hundreds of the most promising early-stage companies to be a finalist of the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, the industry’s premier event for launching up-and-coming technology startups. At the event, Expect Labs unveiled its unique technology platform, called the Anticipatory Computing Engine, which was designed and built to continuously analyze multi-party conversations to extract their underlying meaning. Expect Labs also demonstrated its iPad app called MindMeld, which is powered by this technology and is the first voice and video calling app that can understand conversations in real-time in order to anticipate information you may need as you talk.
Expect Labs intends to use the investment to scale their technology infrastructure and launch the MindMeld Developer Platform. Scheduled for release early next year, the MindMeld Developer Platform is a first-of-its-kind, cloud-based service that merges high-quality, real-time communication with state-of-the-art language analysis and information retrieval. With this platform, a wide range of consumer and enterprise applications can be enriched with continuous context modeling and proactive information discovery.
“The ability to understand and model everyday conversations is important to address new ways in which individuals will interact with one another,” said Karim Faris, partner, Google Ventures. “Expect Labs has the team, track record and vision to fundamentally change the way we find information just a few years down the road. We look forward to working with the them as they build out MindMeld and the Expect Labs platform.”
As part of this investment, Vince Vannelli, managing partner of KPG Ventures, joined Expect Labs’ founders, Tim Tuttle and Moninder Jheeta, on the company’s board of directors. Alex Rosen, managing director of IDG Ventures, also joined as a board observer.
“We love being involved with Expect Labs because Tim and his team have such a deep understanding of how technology evolves to create amazing experiences for discovering information,” said John Lilly, partner at the Greylock Discovery Fund. “They are tackling an ambitious opportunity, which they call ‘Anticipatory Computing’, and we think they have the team and experience to build a very big company here.”
Expect Labs was founded in early 2011 by successful repeat entrepreneurs Timothy Tuttle and Moninder Jheeta. The two first met at the video search company Truveo, where they pioneered the use of advanced technology to extract meaning from streams of unstructured data like audio and video. Truveo grew to become the second largest video search platform on the web and was acquired by AOL. The team at Expect Labs includes PhDs and research experts from the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Carnegie Mellon University, Bell Labs and HP Labs, and has authored nine patents covering the core technology.
For more information or to sign up for early access, visit http://www.expectlabs.com.
About Expect Labs
Expect Labs (http://www.expectlabs.com) is a startup based in San Francisco that is building a technology platform designed to reinvent how we have conversations. Expect Labs is the creator of the iPad app called MindMeld, which is the first voice and video calling app that can actually understand conversations in real-time to make it easy to find and share related information as you talk. Expect Labs was founded in early 2011 by successful, repeat entrepreneurs who have built and sold large-scale Internet businesses. Our team includes PhDs and world-class researchers from places like the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Carnegie Mellon University, Bell Labs and HP Labs. The company is backed by some of Silicon Valley’s most well-known investors including Google Ventures, Greylock Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, IDG Ventures, KPG Ventures, Quest Venture Partners and several prominent angels.
