Cash Fuels SemantiNet Launch

by Ken Schachter on 05 September 2008, 13:10

Categories: Archives - Computers - General news - Media - Communications - Internet - Finance
Topics: Jeff Pulver , SemantiNet , Giza Partners , Ronald Cohen , Joseph Vardi

 
Stealth startup Semantinet, backed by Giza Venture Capital and angel investors including Jeff Pulver and Ronald Cohen, plans to roll out its browser search plug-in later this month and open an office in San Francisco.

The Tel Aviv company nailed down a $3.2 million A round to back up the product launch. Participating in the funding round with Giza, Mr. Pulver, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded the company that became Vonage and Mr. Cohen, who co-founded the firm that became European private equity firm Apax Partners, was Joseph Vardi, former chairman of Mirabilis, the creator instant messaging pioneer ICQ.

The plug-in is designed to scan pages in the background during web surfing sessions, highlight sections of interest and insert relevant links to other web pages. To get a handle on a user’s interests, the plug-in extends to social networks like Facebook and Twitter and gathers information from a user’s friends.

Founder and Chief Executive Tal Keinan is a computer scientist who served in one of the elite technology units of the Israeli Army.