Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective

In-Q-Tel

American defense industry venture capital firm From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Remove ads

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.[2] The name "In-Q-Tel" is an intentional reference to Q, the fictional inventor who supplies technology to James Bond.[5]

Quick Facts Company type, Genre ...
Remove ads

History

Summarize
Perspective
Thumb
Logo as of 2010

Originally named Peleus and known as In-Q-It, In-Q-Tel was "the brainchild" of former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet.[6] Gilman Louie was In-Q-Tel's first CEO[2][5] and Norm Augustine, a former CEO of Lockheed Martin, led the board of directors.[7] In-Q-Tel's mission is to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve United States national security interests. Congress approved funding for In-Q-Tel, which was increased in later years.[8] Origins of the corporation can also be traced to Ruth A. David, who headed the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Science & Technology in the 1990s and promoted the importance of rapidly advancing information technology for the CIA.[5]

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.[9] 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.[10]

In-Q-Tel sold 5,636 shares of Google, worth over US$2.2 million, on November 15, 2005.[11] The share transfer was a result of Google's acquisition of Keyhole, Inc, the CIA-funded satellite mapping software now known as Google Earth.[12]

In August 2006, In-Q-Tel reviewed more than 5,800 business plans and invested approximately $150M in more than 90 companies.[2][13]

As of 2016, In-Q-Tel listed 325 investments, but more than 100 were secret, according to the Washington Post.[8]

Remove ads

Governance

In-Q-Tel is a Virginia-registered corporation,[14] 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.[15] 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.[8]

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.[16]

The chairman of the board is Michael M. Crow.[17]

Remove ads

Investments

Summarize
Perspective

The company lists the majority of its investments on its website page.[18]

In-Q-Tel functions partially in public; however, what products it has and how they are used is strictly secret.[19] 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."[19]

Software

Infrastructure

Hardware
Data centers
  • Bay Microsystems – packet processing and data traffic[8]
  • Systems Research and Development – real-time data warehousing[8]
  • Network Appliance – Decru (networked data storage)[8]
  • JetCool – liquid cooling for data centres[25]
Bioscience
Remove ads
Remove ads

References

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads