In-Q-Tel, a private venture capital company set up by the CIA in 1999, helps the spy agency stay up-to-date on technology that could help it uncover national security threats.
The size of the investment in Lingotek Inc. is a secret, but it amounts to the "low millions" of dollars, Rob Vandenberg, Lingotek vice president of sales and marketing, said Wednesday.
Lingotek is a tiny start-up with 12 employees. Founded two years ago, the company has developed a software-based warehouse of words and phrases translated from other languages, Vandenberg said.
When doing a translation, the software issues prompts to translators when it recognizes a word or phrase that is stored in the warehouse, speeding up the translation of documents. The software also collects and stores new information from succeeding translations, which allows the warehouse to get bigger and more sophisticated over time.
The software is also Web-based, allowing several translators to work on the same document together.
"We develop software focused on collaborative translation. It allows many people to work together to translate content [while] creating a warehouse of translations," Vandenberg said.
Lingotek will use the money from In-Q-Tel to develop more collaborative software and expand into new markets. The company also will fill five software engineering and sales positions.
Arlington, Va.-based In-Q-Tel also received three product licenses and an undisclosed equity stake in Lingotek in return for its investment.
In-Q-Tel officials were not available Wednesday. But in a statement, the company said Lingotek is poised to make significant developments in collaborative translation technology.
"Lingotek is a critical addition to our strategic investment portfolio for language translation technology," said Troy Pearsall, In-Q-Tel's executive vice president of architecture and engineering.
In-Q-Tel's investment isn't the first venture capital Lingotek has received. Canopy Ventures, a Lindon-based venture capital firm, and Flywheel Ventures in Albuquerque, N.M., have put $2.6 million into Lingotek since 2006.
pbeebe@sltrib.com
