Bitvore: The AI, Real Time, Custom Report Search Engine
May 16, 2017
Just when I thought information access had slumped quietly through another week, I read in the capitalist tool which you know as Forbes, the content marketing machine, this article:
This AI Search Engine Delivers Tailored Data to Companies in Real Time.
This write up struck me as more interesting than the most recent IBM Watson prime time commercial about smart software for zealous professional basketball fans or Lucidworks’ (really?) acquisition of the interface builder Twigkit. Forbes Magazine’s write up did not point out that the company seems to be channeling Palantir Technologies; for example, Jeff Curie, the president, refers to employees at Bitvorians. Take that, you Hobbits and Palanterians.
A Bitvore 3D data structure.
The AI, real time, custom report search engine is called Bitvore. Here in Harrod’s Creek, we recognized the combination of the computer term “bit” with a syllable from one of our favorite morphemes “vore” as in carnivore or omnivore or the vegan-sensitive herbivore.
Some points I highlighted:
- Bitvore consists of “200 machine learning algorithms that analyze each piece of information flowing through the system…”
- An unnamed government agency wanted a “flashlight in a dark room”
- Like Palantir Gotham, humans have a role to play but users “personalize Bitvore’s output by connecting a source of information about their targets”
- The system is “trained” to identity over “300 events that are early indicators of a change that impacts the performance and health of a business.”
- “Everyone wants to know what’s happening but no one has a reasonable means to accomplish this.”
- Bitvore is “in the intelligence business.”
- Bitvore “runs a factory that produces intelligence.”
The search and content processing system delivers “precision intelligence.” The focus seems to be on financial use cases with a focus on CUSIP-tagged news. This description in the Lumesis deal states:
develops easy-to-use applications for financial markets that provide an information advantage through laser-focused, low-noise surveillance of customer portfolios over news, social media and public data sources. Bitvore high performance system gives our customers the ability to uncover and act on intelligence hours or days before others.
The company’s Facebook page reveals that:
Bitvore continuously monitors and analyzes information from news, social media, Web sites, email, and more to extract important business changes from the noise.
Yep, deltas. Changes. Exception detection.
According to Crunchbase, the company was founded by Dave (CEO) and Carl Mandel (chief design officer). David Mandel serves as the chairman of the company. The company’s total equity funding is $8.2 million. Owler pegs the company’s revenue at $5 million. Founded in 2009 (a news release states that the company was founded in 2010), The company seems to be looking for additional funding if the firm’s Form D data are accurate. In 2015, the company allegedly focused on scaling up sales and marketing to help expand the market footprint and growth the revenue stream.” Bloomberg reports that Alan Chaney is the firm’s “chief architect,” and Dr. Bolcer is the firm’s chief technologist. In May 2017, Bitvore hired Jerry Welsh, a former IBM Watson global sales leader. Customers include Kroll Bond Rating Agency (municipal bond rating service). Bitvore competes with such firms as Lavastorm Analytics, Platfora, aiHit, and the old standbys, Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters.
Is Bitvore a JASE (just another search engine), Jeff Curie stated in a 2015 LinkedIn FAQ:
While you can definitely do on-demand searches with Bitvore, we are not a search engine per se. Bitvore’s platform searches, then reads what it finds, throws out the junk and keeps the impactful, fresh information. We replace this common manual process: do a search on the internet, read every article that came back in the first several pages of the results, pick out ONLY juicy impactful articles, file them under a specific company or investment and then send an alert to the person it impacts. The Bitvore platform does this all day long for thousands and thousands of different subjects, companies and assets. You can access the content in the platform via a search, API or an alert in an email.
When I looked for the promised second part of the FAQ about Bitvore, I saw this helpful screen on LinkedIn.com:
Yep, quiet. And a promise unkept. Interesting.
One of the firm’s key technological innovations is a three dimensional data cube. The storage mechanism is what appears to be an index which makes it possible to identify certain types of data signals. Here’s a representation of the cube with the nexus flagged with patent paragraph reference numbers:
The structure is described in US20120200567, Method and Apparatus for 3D Analysis and Display of Disparate Data. Other patent documents filed by Bitvore include:
- 8626750
- 20140059017
- 20140059056
- 20160004705
- 9547682
- 9594823. (includes a reference to data globs).
What’s Beyond Search’s take on Bitvore? The company is a hybrid, combining content processing and analysis for specific domains; for example, municipal bonds. The secret sauces seems to be the data storage and structure plumbing. The reach out to an IBM Watson veteran is an interesting twist because IBM Watson is a hot air balloon and Bitvore is a fish with teeth.
Stephen E Arnold, May 16, 2017
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