Cambridge, MA - January 7, 2004 - MetaCarta®, Inc., a leading provider of geographic intelligence, announces that it had secured $6.5 million in Series B funding from venture capital firms and institutional investors. The list of investors includes Sevin Rosen Funds, Solstice Capital, Chevron Technology Ventures LLC and Chisholm Private Capital Partners.
Founded in 2001, MetaCarta’s groundbreaking technology bridges the gap between Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and document retrieval. MetaCarta’s flagship product, MetaCarta Geographic Text Search™ (GTS), boosts productivity by reducing the number of person-hours involved in searching, sorting, and reading large volumes of documents.
MetaCarta’s users include intelligence agencies, military organizations, and large energy corporations - all of which require immediate access to information on a geographical basis. MetaCarta’s new round of funding enables the organization to build upon its leadership within the government and energy markets, expand its product line, and extend market leadership into new market segments.
“Enterprises and government organizations have invested billions of dollars in document management systems, GIS systems, and enterprise search technology," said Kevin Jacques, partner at Sevin Rosen Funds. "Most of the stored documents contain at least one reference to a geographic location, but the geo relevant information or geo context is not typically accessible through the GIS or search platforms. Users must spend painstaking and expensive hours reading through text to find the relevant documents and information they need. With MetaCarta, this information can be automatically geocoded and accessed instantly. MetaCarta significantly extends the utility of these installed systems."
“MetaCarta will revolutionize the way people locate documents,” said Fred Bamber, general partner at Solstice Capital. “Already productive for the intelligence community and energy market, the technology presents huge value in other related fields such as law enforcement, homeland security, environmental compliance, and other fields where text and geography are important.”
“The public and private sector continue to demand greater payback from their investments in technology infrastructure during the past 10 years, and that means looking for more intelligent applications to better manage their data,” says Jeff Williams, general partner of Chisholm Private Capital Partners. “MetaCarta fills a significant void in the document management sector by allowing companies and organizations to be more effective at storing and finding time-sensitive and relevant data without straining technology or human resources.”
“MetaCarta continues to grow upon early successes. Our company’s vision, and our employees’ effort, expertise, and execution continues to drive our growing recognition and product acceptance within government and energy markets,” states John Frank, founder of MetaCarta. “This latest investment is a testament to our organization’s ability to deliver valuable solutions in support of mission critical customer needs.”
MetaCarta GTS uses natural language processing to identify implied and explicit references to geographic locations within documents. The solution marks documents with appropriate latitude and longitude coordinates, and then enables a search for marked documents through a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Users search for documents using a combination of geographic location and keywords. Documents appear as icons on a digital map. The location of each document icon coincides with the geographic locations mentioned within the document. To locate documents relative to a specific location, MetaCarta GTS renders a map appropriately speckled with icons representing every document that includes text pertaining to the identified location. By clicking on a document icon, a user gains direct access to the original document in its entirety. This greatly improves productivity.
About Sevin Rosen Funds
Sevin Rosen Funds is a top-tier venture capital firm with a track record of funding successful companies since 1981. The partnership has consistently made early-stage investments in pioneering technologies and companies with the potential to create new markets. The most recent fund, Sevin Rosen Fund VIII, is capitalized at $600 million. Compaq, Lotus, Cypress, Citrix, CIENA and Capstone Turbine are some of the firm's successful IPOs. Sevin Rosen Funds has offices in Dallas, Palo Alto, Austin, and San Diego. For more information, go to www.srfunds.com.
About Solstice Capital
Solstice Capital seeks superior venture capital returns through investments in seed- and early-stage companies in the sectors of alternative energy, education, the environment, life sciences and information technology. Two of Solstice Capital’s general partners were successful operating executives in information service and document management startups. The first Solstice fund, formed in 1995, invested in 21 portfolio companies. In July 2001, Solstice Capital formed Solstice Capital II; MetaCarta is its 18th portfolio company. Solstice Capital currently has $85 million of capital under management. To learn more, visit www.solcap.com.
About Chevron Technology Ventures LLC
Chevron Technology Ventures LLC, a unit of ChevronTexaco Corporation, is involved with identifying and investing in new and emerging technologies that have the potential to enhance the performance of ChevronTexaco businesses and lead to new growth opportunities. Based in San Ramon, Calif., ChevronTexaco is the second largest U.S.-based energy company and the fifth largest in the world, based on market capitalization. More than 53,000 ChevronTexaco employees work in approximately 180 countries around the world, producing oil and natural gas and marketing fuels and other energy products. For more information, visit www.chevrontexaco.com/technologyventures/
About Chisholm Private Capital Partners
Chisholm Private Capital Partners is a $100 million fund investing between $1 million to $5 million in early stage and later stage businesses, usually as the first institutional backer for a portfolio company. The firm also manages The Oklahoma Life Science Fund, an affiliated fund focusing on early stage healthcare companies located primarily in Texas and Oklahoma. The company has offices in Dallas, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. For more information, please visit www.chisholmvc.com.
About MetaCarta
MetaCarta, a leading provider of geographic intelligence, offers comprehensive analysis tools to enable better business decisions. Founded by a team of MIT researchers in 2001, MetaCarta provides groundbreaking technology that bridges the gap between Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and text search. The company presents innovative solutions that improve decision-making by making it possible for customers to place documents on a map. The company is privately held, with offices in Cambridge, MA, Vienna, VA, and Houston, TX. To learn more about MetaCarta, please visit www.metacarta.com.
MetaCarta is a trademark of MetaCarta, Incorporated. All other product or corporate references may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.