$90m Primes Attensity for Rapid Growth
In California, data mining and semantic analytics provider Attensity has closed $90m in equity financing, which it says will be used to accelerate product innovation, fuel market growth, and expand its sales, marketing and engineering teams.

The company has also officially installed Howard Lau in the CEO role, which he has de facto filled since the end of last year. Lau worked previously in managerial positions at SAP, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Andersen Consulting, and was a founding executive at SAP Labs and SAP Ventures.

Attensity analyzes more than 150 million data sources and is one of only a few firms with access to Twitters full 'firehose' raw data stream. The company's patented semantic technologies, analytics and context based discovery pull 'relevant and accurate' information from multi-channel data sources, both structured and unstructured.

The latest financing came from 'an international private equity fund and financial advisor company', and adds to about $58m previously raised. Attensity was founded in 2000 in Salt Lake City and reportedly had around 330 employees and revenue of around $50m in 2011, 'though after selling off a services business in Germany headcount has apparently dropped to around 150.

Lau, who replaced former CEO Ian Bonner as Chairman in early 2013, and took on the CEO role in late 2013 from Kirsten Bay, says of the latest developments: 'Attensity is already an established market leader in social media analytics used by global companies. Now we are extending that lead even further into brand reputation as well as the early detection of trends, business opportunities and threats, thereby enabling companies to stay ahead of the market and build competitive advantage.'

Web site: www.attensity.com .