Hello. This is the CIA. We want a share in your business.

This morning at work, sipping coffee, I ran through the eyes of information tape on techcrunch.com. Glance focused on the phrase that the fifth in terms of funding for a startup in the United States had financial support from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The news itself didn’t impress me very much, but I remembered an episode five years ago when I was hired by one of the startups in San Bruno to solve a small problem with authenticating the use of the SAML protocol. I was pretty keen on the project in such a way that it wasn’t much to mend relations with my colleagues, and then one Fridays people in the office started talking about social networks in a relaxed way ... I didn’t bother to put a line on my conversation - that they say “social networks is the best project of the CIA over the past few decades.” My comment was met with hysterical laughter and applause ...
')
At that moment I actually didn’t assume that the startup who hired me owes his existence just to government agencies and similar funds.

So what is this CIA foundation that funds startups in the US?

Refer to the site of the fund In-Q-Tel (IQT) which explains why the CIA created its investment venture capital fund. Nothing ordinary, strictly speaking. In 1998, the CIA decided that technology development was a priority for the CIA. Once they decided, they did so by founding a foundation for technology from the private sector.

The range of funding for the fund is rather specific and is not limited to three main areas:

• Analytics
• Big Date
• Security

The list of funded companies by the CIA fund fascinates with its variety of well-known startups. The staff of the foundation has previously worked in well-known companies and knows the technologies and specifics of working in a non-first-person startup.

But let's return to my morning coffee and ask ourselves the question: what is the purpose of studying the techcranch news feed? Yes, obviously, look for example who got the funding? - Yeah, IQT today allocated 12 million dollars for the development of materials for 3D printers

Jul 24, 2015 Voxel8 $ 12M Series A

Normally, the guys at Voksel8 will need new employees if you personally are interested in this direction, why not drop your resume. Having run through the list of financing, we look at the trend and pretend for ourselves what it makes sense to turn our attention to in the future.

In fact, the techcranch provides information on the work of an entire CIA unit, and looking at what the IQT venture fund finances and tries to develop in a technology trend provides quite a lot of information for reflection.

List of fund investments since May 2012
I allocated investments over 10 million dollars. The largest investment of 150 million dollars was allocated in August 29, 2013 Pure Storage of a company that stores data on flash memory.

Date invested
Jul 24, 2015 Voxel8 $ 12M Series A -
May 28, 2015 Tyfone $ 6.6M Series C -
May 6, 2015 Fuel3D undisclosed amount Venture -
Apr 16, 2015 Recorded Future $ 12M Series D -
Apr 1, 2015 BlueLine Grid $ 3.8M Undisclosed -
Sep 26, 2014 MemSQL undisclosed amount Undisclosed -
Jul 18, 2014 Expect Labs undisclosed amount Undisclosed -
Mar 19, 2014 Platfora $ 38M Series C -
Mar 6, 2014 Redlen Technologies $ 5.5M Venture -
Dec 1, 2013 NerVve Technologies undisclosed amount Venture -
Oct 28, 2013 Paxata $ 8M Series B -
Sep 1, 2013 Protonex Technology Corporation undisclosed amount Venture -
Aug 29, 2013 Pure Storage $ 150M Series E -
Aug 26, 2013 HyTrust $ 18.5M Series C -
Aug 5, 2013 Weather Analytics $ 1.8M Convertible Note -
Jul 31, 2013 Apigee $ 35M Series F -
Jun 26, 2013 Socrata $ 18M Series B -
May 15, 2013 Boundless Spatial, Inc. $ 3M Series A George Hoyem
May 14, 2013 Cloudant $ 12M Series B -
Apr 30, 2013 Skytree $ 18M Series A -
Apr 16, 2013 RedOwl Analytics $ 100k Grant -
Apr 5, 2013 Narrative Science $ 550k Venture -
Mar 29, 2013 QD Vision $ 20M Series E -
Mar 1, 2013 AppThwack $ 600k Seed -
Jan 22, 2013 Goal Zero $ 7M Venture -
Dec 7, 2012 Cloudera $ 65M Series E -
Nov 15, 2012 Quanterix $ 18.5M Series C -
Nov 13, 2012 Platfora $ 20M Series B -
Nov 11, 2012 BIO-NEMS $ 725k Debt Financing -
Oct 4, 2012 D-Wave Systems $ 30M Venture -
Oct 2, 2012 Cloudant undisclosed amount Undisclosed -
Sep 26, 2012 D-Wave Systems $ 1.2M Venture -
Sep 5, 2012 Tenable Network Security $ 50M Series A -
Sep 5, 2012 908 Devices $ 8.1M Series A -
Sep 1, 2012 Claremont BioSolutions undisclosed amount Venture -
Aug 23, 2012 Mocana $ 25M Series D -
Jun 6, 2012 Delphix $ 25M Series C -
Jun 1, 2012 Imprint Energy undisclosed amount Venture -
May 24, 2012 Huddle $ 24M Series C -
May 15, 2012 InView Technology $ 1.5M Series A -