Pluggd, a Seattle company that lets you search audio and video files for words or themes, has raised just under $6 million in financing.
Pluggd is a hot company because it does something well that few others have been able to match. You can search for “iPhone,” and Pluggd will give you a heat map showing all the places in the video file where iPhone is mentioned or even themes related to the iPhone. Click on image below for a demo.
See our previous coverage of the company.
Intel Capital, the venture arm of chip company Intel, led the round. Intel had earlier invested in the company’s seed round. Other investors include DFJ Frontier, Labrador Ventures and the Band of Angels. We’re hearing the company received an acquisition offer, but turned it down after receiving multiple favorable offers from venture capital firms.
The company is moving quickly. Last time we covered the company, it searched only audio files. Now it searches video.
It also offers a widget to search audio and video on third-party sites.
Other companies offer competing technology, but none distribute the same heat-map precision features. One is YuMe, of Redwood City, Calif., which also uses speech-recognition technology to allow advertisers to decide which videos to advertise on. That company employs people in India to make sure that videos are about what they say they are. It has received more than $7 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, Accel Partners, and BV Capital and others. Another is EveryZing, which raised $10 million in June.
Pluggd and YuMe were both voted “best in show” at July’s Under the Radar event.
Tags: co:Pluggd, deal, inv:Band-of-Angels, inv:DFJ-Frontier, inv:Intel-Capital, Labrador-Ventures, pluggd3 Comments
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mansajang said:
This is really cool sounding technology.
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dan said:
Now someone needs to crack this idea on the open source side of things or those companies need to licesne that tech out please!! Working in design research it would be a great to give clients vids and they could easily search within hundreds of hours of clips to find those key moments easier. It seems like a better way of skipping to the essential bits vs chapters or tags or other ways to navigate video… especially if the system is automated and it just processes a clip, though theres probably some kind of human error checking going on.
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Pluggd Audio Search Sees Dollar Signs said:
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Stuarts Blog » Pluggd Audio Search Sees Dollar Signs said:
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Search voor video/audio: even geduld nog » Cafe del Marketing said:
[...] en audiosearch nog lang niet zo ver, maar de veelbelovende startup Pluggd heeft kort geleden 6 miljoen dollar binnen gehaald voor het verder ontwikkelen van hun service (klik op image voor een [...]
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Startup Signal - Today’s Top Blog Posts on Entrepreneurship - Powered by SocialRank said:
[...] VentureBeat » Pluggd raises $6M for audio-video word search [...]
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August 23, 2007 at said:
[...] Multimedia Search Firm Pluggd Raises $6MM in VC Funding VENTUREBEAT Pluggd, a US multimedia search startup, is receiving USD6m in VC funding led by existing investor Intel Capital. Other participants in the round include DFJ Frontier, Labrador Ventures and Band of Angels. Added to an investment it received from Intel in Dec, the startup has now raised USD7.7m in VC funding. Pluggd offers a video and audio search engine that uses speech-to-text technology to enable users to search for words within audio and video files. However, unlike other video search engines using the technology, like Blinkx and EveryZing, the startup’s “heat map” highlights points within a clip where the search word is mentioned. Venture Beat claims the US startup turned down an acquisition offer because of the intensive VC interest. Source> [...]