Powerset, the Palo Alto search engine that wants do Google one better by understanding the phrases you are searching for, has raised $12.5 million in a first round of venture capital.
The company is controversial because it claims it can do “natural language” search, the holy grail of search that most experts have dismissed as impossible. See our previous story here about the company.
Significantly, the company also raised its venture capital at a sky-high valuation — even higher than VentureBeat originally reported a few weeks ago when we first broke the Powerset story. The company raised money at a pre-investment value of more than $30 million, giving the company a value of more than $42.5 million after the money was put in.
Powerset is notable because it says it can improve on Google’s search engine by understanding the meaning between words. Take, for example, the phrase, “Who did Dick Cheney shoot?” Powerset will give you results with references to Harry Whittington, Cheney’s hunting partner who Cheney accidentally shot. However, if you type in “Who shot Dick Cheney?” it will give you a response “Sorry, no results.” Google, on the other hand, can’t distinguish between these two phrases, and gives very similar results for both.
Similarly, if you type in “Who acquired IBM?,” Google will give you lots of results about companies that IBM acquired, even though that’s not what you asked — because Google can’t understand that the difference between an object and subject. Powerset, on the other hand, will give results of the various companies that acquired IBM units, including Lenovo, and AT&T — which is a better answer to the original question.
The funding came from Foundation Capital ($7m), The Founders Fund ($3m), and several angel investors ($2.5m combined). The list of angels is long; it is here.
To help it scale and satisfy its considerable data storage needs, Powerset has struck a partnership with Amazon’s new Elastic Computer Cloud program. The program gives Powerset access to an Amazon network of extra computers and storage, at a cost of ten cents a CPU hour — letting Powerset focus on its core search, which it wants to launch next year. Co-founder Lorenzo Thione (pictured here) writes about this here.
Thione and co-founders Barney Pell (pictured left) and Steve Newcomb (pictured below) still insist their engine will defy the skeptics. Peter Norvig, head of research at Google, continues to give talks saying that insertion of linguistics hasn’t made any difference in Google’s results. Barney Pell, responds: “But we’re changing that.”
Charles Moldow of Foundation and Peter Thiel of The Founders Fund will join the board.
Powerset is in the process of moving to San Francisco.
3 Comments
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Daniel said:
Is the Carl Page listed among the angel investors in powerset (and as an angel investor in google) the same Carl Page that is Larry Page’s dad? anyone?
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harry johnson said:
hi my name is Harry johnson i am very intrested in this company when and how can i buy stock in this company thanks Harry
21 Trackbacks
9:23 pm
VentureBeat » More on Powerset, the secretive search engine said:
[...] (Update: See our subsequent funding story here) [...]
2:23 am
links for 2006-11-06 « My Weblog said:
[...] VentureBeat » Powerset gets $12.5M at whopper valuation, to go after search holy grail (tags: search google yahoo) [...]
4:02 am
Powerset, Conduit, Fox Interactive’s SpringWidgets (beta) « Technically Speaking said:
[...] Powerset raised $12.5 million going after the holy grail in search. Looks like they are working on something that even Google can’t do. [...]
7:43 am
VentureBeat Wire » Foundation promotes Charles Moldow to partner said:
[...] He has worked as a venture partner at the firm for more than a year, and sourced the Powerset deal VentureBeat wrote about yesterday. [...]
7:45 am
VentureBeat Wire » Powerset gets $12.5M at whopper valuation, to go after search holy grail said:
[...] See our story here. VentureBeat Community [...]
8:45 pm
Powerset slowly coming out of the closet « SEND IT!!! said:
[...] Caught Powerset’s announcement today on VentureBeat first. They raised a nice whopping round of $12.5M at $30M pre-money valuation, basically meaning that they sold 30% of the company. That’s really awesome to have gotten such a large valuation on a company that has yet to earn a dime or release their product. Heck, even Jonathan’s Friendster was already in the market when he got what was thought to be a pretty high valuation of $40M pre-money for a Series A deal. [...]
8:52 am
Web 2.0 Television » The problem with Powerset said:
[...] Powerset has raised $12.5-million (U.S.) in a first round of venture capital hoping to do Google one better in the search engine business. [...]
12:26 am
Without Context there is no Meaning « SEND IT!!! said:
[...] In that post, I refer to Matt Marshall’s VentureBeat post that claims the following about Powerset: [...]
11:39 pm
Actualidad informática » Blog Archive » Todos quieren construir un buscador de lenguaje natural… incluso Google said:
[...] Hace unas semanas, Danny Sullivan escribÃa este post hace unos meses sobre los proyectos más sonados de la historia, y recientemente hemos podido conocer algunos otros que pretenden volver a ser noticia, como por ejemplo Hakia y Chacha. Y esta última semana, el prestigioso diario ‘New York Times’ publicaba un artÃculo en el que se hacÃa eco de estos dos proyectos y de otro más: Powerset, un buscador que aún no ofrece de manera pública ningún servicio, pero que ha conseguido más de 12 millones de dólares de manos de firmas de capital-riesgo. [...]
4:31 pm
Álvaro Salcedo » Buscadores en busca de un buscador natural - ^A^eromático - aeromatico said:
[...] Hace unas semanas, Danny Sullivan escribÃa este post hace unos meses sobre los proyectos más sonados de la historia, y recientemente hemos podido conocer algunos otros que pretenden volver a ser noticia, como por ejemplo Hakia y Chacha. Y esta última semana, el prestigioso diario ‘New York Times’ publicaba un artÃculo en el que se hacÃa eco de estos dos proyectos y de otro más: Powerset, un buscador que aún no ofrece de manera pública ningún servicio, pero que ha conseguido más de 12 millones de dólares de manos de firmas de capital-riesgo. [...]
9:15 pm
» Will search ever REALLY be better? » SEO News - All The SEO Scoop said:
[...] I’ve been reading about Powerset lately which promises natural language search. An article I read today uses the following examples to explain how Powerset plans to outdo Google: Powerset is notable because it says it can improve on Google’s search engine by understanding the meaning between words. Take, for example, the phrase, “Who did Dick Cheney shoot?†Powerset will give you results with references to Harry Whittington, Cheney’s hunting partner who Cheney accidentally shot. However, if you type in “Who shot Dick Cheney?†it will give you a response “Sorry, no results.†Google, on the other hand, can’t distinguish between these two phrases, and gives very similar results for both. [...]
4:33 am
Le blog de Synthesio » Blog Archive » Beaucoup de bruit pour rien dans le monde des moteurs de recherche said:
[...] L’autre arlésienne des moteurs de recherche web est l’américain Powerset, qui s’appuie sur une technologie de NLP (Natural Language Processing) développée par le PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) de Xerox et a levé pas moins de 12,5 M$ en novembre 2005. [...]
2:33 am
Google vs Everyone: 10 Markets Where Google Wants to Win said:
[...] Powerset – Much hyped Powerset hasn’t launched yet, but intends to build a natural language search engine that could change the way people find things online. The company has raised significant venture capital that has already valued PowerSet at more than $40 million. [...]
5:16 am
Google vs Everyone: 10 Markets Where Google Wants to Win said:
[...] way people find things online. The company has raised significant venture capital that has already valued PowerSet at more than $40 million. Wikiasari – As part of his for-profit company, Wikia, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales looks to [...]
7:38 am
mind new media » Google vs Everyone: 10 Markets Where Google Wants to Win said:
[...] Powerset – Much hyped Powerset hasn’t launched yet, but intends to build a natural language search engine that could change the way people find things online. The company has raised significant venture capital that has already valued PowerSet at more than $40 million. [...]
7:34 am
proxieslist.net said:
[...] Powerset – Much hyped Powerset hasn’t launched yet, but intends to build a natural language search engine that could change the way people find things online. The company has raised significant venture capital that has already valued PowerSet at more than $40 million. [...]
4:16 am
Make money web » Blog Archive » Google vs Everyone: 10 Markets Where Google Wants to Win said:
[...] Powerset – Much hyped Powerset hasn’t launched yet, but intends to build a natural language search engine that could change the way people find things online. The company has raised significant venture capital that has already valued PowerSet at more than $40 million. [...]
2:46 am
» Google vs Everyone: 10 Markets Where Google Wants to Win said:
[...] Powerset – Much hyped Powerset hasn’t launched yet, but intends to build a natural language search engine that could change the way people find things online. The company has raised significant venture capital that has already valued PowerSet at more than $40 million. [...]
10:50 pm
» Powerset Announces Powerset Labs: And The Hype Continues || Pulse 2.0: Web 2.0 Reviews & Profiles || » Blog Archive said:
[...] So what makes Powerset different and how do they have the audacity to think they can compete with Google. One sentence: “Unlike other search engines that index keywords, Powerset does a deep linguistic analysis on every sentence it reads.” This line is impressive enough to even get Carl Page, the brother of a Google co-founder to invest in Powerset. [...]
9:19 am
VentureBeat » Powerset, the hyped search engine company, sees shakeup said:
[...] for founders and entrepreneurs who try to raise money early at stratospheric levels: Powerset raised $12.5 million last year from Foundation Capital, the Founders Fund and long list of individuals, giving it a post-money [...]
11:21 am
Where the Rubber Meets the Road… » Blog Archive » PowerSet & Broken Search said:
[...] response to my post yesterday on search, someone sent me a link to PowerSet. They raised $12.5 million in venture in November 2006 in order to “fix” search through natural language processing. [...]