In-Q-Tel

In-Q-Tel (IQT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability. The name "In-Q-Tel" is an intentional reference to Q, the fictional inventor who supplies technology to James Bond.

History
Originally named Peleus and known as In-Q-It, In-Q-Tel was founded by Norm Augustine, a former CEO of Lockheed Martin, and by Gilman Louie, who was In-Q-Tel's first CEO. In-Q-Tel's mission is to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve United States national security interests. According to the Washington post, In-Q-Tel started as the idea of then CIA director George Tenet. Congress approved funding for In-Q-Tel, which was increased in later years. Origins of the corporation can also be traced to Ruth A. David, who headed the Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science & Technology in the 1990s and promoted the importance of rapidly advancing information technology for the CIA. In-Q-Tel now engages with entrepreneurs, growth companies, researchers, and venture capitalists to deliver technologies that provide superior capabilities for the CIA, DIA, NGA, and the wider intelligence community. In-Q-Tel concentrates on three broad commercial technology areas: software, infrastructure and materials sciences.

Former CIA director George Tenet said,

We [the CIA] decided to use our limited dollars to leverage technology developed elsewhere. In 1999 we chartered ... In-Q-Tel. ... While we pay the bills, In-Q-Tel is independent of CIA. CIA identifies pressing problems, and In-Q-Tel provides the technology to address them. The In-Q-Tel alliance has put the Agency back at the leading edge of technology ... This ... collaboration ... enabled CIA to take advantage of the technology that Las Vegas uses to identify corrupt card players and apply it to link analysis for terrorists [ cf. the parallel data-mining effort by the SOCOM-DIA operation Able Danger], and to adapt the technology that online booksellers use and convert it to scour millions of pages of documents looking for unexpected results.

In-Q-Tel sold 5,636 shares of Google, worth over US$2.2 million, on November 15, 2005. The shares were a result of Google's acquisition of Keyhole, Inc, the CIA-funded satellite mapping software now known as Google Earth.

In August 2006, In-Q-Tel reviewed more than 5,800 business plans and invested approximately $150M in more than 90 companies.

As of 2016, In-Q-Tel listed 325 investments, but more than 100 were kept secret, according to the Washington Post. The absence of disclosure can be due to national security concerns or simply because a startup company doesn’t want its financial ties to intelligence publicized.

Governance
In-Q-Tel is a Virginia-registered corporation, legally independent of the CIA or any other government agency. The corporation is bound by its Charter agreement and annual contract with the CIA, which set out the relationship between the two organizations. In-Q-Tel's mission (to support the Intelligence Community's technical needs) is promoted by the In-Q-Tel Interface Center (QIC), an office within the CIA that facilitates communication and relationships between In-Q-Tel and government intelligence organizations. While In-Q-Tel is a nonprofit corporation, it differs from IARPA and other models in that its employees and trustees can profit from its investments. A Wall Street Journal investigation found that in 2016, nearly half of In-Q-Tel's trustees had a financial connection with a company the corporation had funded.

In-Q-Tel's current president and CEO is Steve Bowsher.

Original members of the board include Lee A. Ault, III, Norman R. Augustine, John Seely Brown, Stephen Friedman, Paul G. Kaminski, Jeong H. Kim, Alex J. Mandl, John N. McMahon, and William J. Perry.

The chairman of the board is Michael M. Crow.

Investments
The company lists the majority of its investments on its website page.

In-Q-Tel functions partially in public; however, what products it has and how they are used is strictly secret. According to The Washington Post, "virtually any U.S. entrepreneur, inventor or research scientist working on ways to analyze data has probably received a phone call from In-Q-Tel or at least been Googled by its staff of technology-watchers."

Software

 * MemSQL – Distributed, in-memory, SQL database management system for real-time analytics
 * Keyhole, Inc – Geospatial visualization application (Acquired by Google in 2004 and would go on to become Google Earth in 2005)
 * Boundless Spatial – geospatial software - acquired by Planet Labs
 * Huddle – cloud-based content collaboration software
 * Oculis Labs – visual cyber security solutions
 * Destineer – games FPS training simulation
 * GeoIQ FortiusOne – visualization on maps
 * Forterra – virtual worlds for training
 * Quantum4D – visualization technology
 * Visual Sciences – real-time visual analysis
 * Spotfire – visualization data analytics
 * Algorithmic — Infrastructure for deploying and scaling AI/ML models
 * Palantir Technologies – data integration, search and discovery, knowledge management, and secure collaboration
 * PiXlogic – visual search
 * Agent Logic – event detection and response software – Webspector webpage change software
 * ArcSight – secure software
 * Zaplet – email
 * Authentica – secure messaging and secure document sharing
 * Teradici Corporation – desktop virtualization
 * Connectify – Wifi & VPN
 * SafeWeb PrivacyMatrix – browsing (closed in Nov. 2001)
 * Visible Technologies – social media monitoring
 * Silver Tail Systems – website fraud prevention
 * InnoCentive – crowdsourcing websites
 * Fetch Technologies – Internet Data Management -bots & RSS
 * SRA OrionMagic – cms software
 * Recorded Future – web intelligence and predictive analytics
 * Traction Software – web 2.0
 * Internet Evidence Finder – Digital forensic tool
 * Basis Technology – multilingual text analytics and cyber forensics
 * Language Weaver – automatic language translation
 * Lingotek – translation services
 * Cassatt – desktop software
 * Tacit Knowledge Systems – internal software
 * FMS – analysis, visualization, and knowledgebase to the United States Intelligence Community
 * Initiate Systems – real-time multiple database software
 * TerraGo – location intelligence applications and software GeoPDF
 * Geosemble – unstructured data analytics and geospatial software - acquired by TerraGo
 * NovoDynamics – Arabic character recognition
 * Adapx – Microsoft Office & GIS
 * Digital Reasoning – Synthesys v3.0 – review facts and associations at a glance
 * CallMiner – Phone speech analytics software
 * Carnegie Speech – speech recognition
 * AzTE] PRISM – handwriting recognition
 * A4Vision – 3D facial imaging
 * SRD – identity resolution software
 * Inktomi Corp – network infrastructure software
 * Mohomine mohoClassifier – organises mass data
 * Stratify – organizes mass data
 * Endeca – search data repositories
 * Inxight – search engine
 * Convera RetrievalWare – search engine
 * MetaCarta – search engine
 * Attensity – search engine
 * Platfora – big data analytics and visualization
 * Intelliseek – search engine
 * FireEye – malware protection
 * ReversingLabs – malware detection and analysis
 * zSpace (company) – 3-Dimensional holographic imaging displays
 * Socrata – Open Data Solutions for Government Innovation
 * Interset – Security Analytics/User Behavior Analytics
 * Nozomi Networks – OT and IoT security and visibility
 * D2iQ (formerly Mesosphere) – Apache Mesos and Kubernetes consulting firm
 * Fuel3D – 3D scanning
 * TRX Systems – 3D mapping
 * Wickr - Encrypted messaging application
 * Looking Glass Factory - Holography
 * HEO - Space Imagery

Infrastructure

 * Hardware
 * Xanadu Quantum Technologies – photonic quantum computers
 * Tyfone – digital security for mobility, cloud, and IoT
 * Stoke Space – reusable rocket


 * Data centers
 * Bay Microsystems – packet processing and data traffic
 * Systems Research and Development – real-time data warehousing
 * Network Appliance – Decru (networked data storage)
 * JetCool – liquid cooling for data centres

Related personnel

 * Dan Geer (2008–present) Chief Information Security Officer
 * Michael D. Griffin – former president; later administrator of NASA.
 * Norman R. Augustine
 * Gilman Louie – former CEO
 * Paul G. Kaminski – former director
 * Amit Yoran – former CEO
 * John Seely Brown
 * Stephen Friedman
 * William J. Perry
 * Alex J. Mandl
 * Rebecca Bace
 * Luciana Borio
 * Peter Barris
 * Anita K. Jones
 * Jami Miscik
 * Jeong H. Kim