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Eliyon, a Next Generation Content Provider, Raises $7 Million in First-Round Growth Capital from Venrock
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - (BUSINESS WIRE) - July 15, 2004 - Eliyon Technologies (www.eliyon.com), the leader in automated content creation search technology, announced today that it raised $7 million from Venrock Associates in its first round of venture funding. Founded in 2000, Eliyon has emerged as the premier tool in the executive recruiting market for identifying top-level hidden talent. The company will use the growth capital to accelerate its expansion into additional domains, including sales prospecting, research and several other markets. Eliyon has been generating cash and growing rapidly from internal resources for seven consecutive quarters and, in a separate announcement today, reported record subscriber growth for the second quarter of 2004. Eliyon's customers come from virtually all industries, counting more than 25% of the Fortune 100, including AOL, Google, and Yahoo!.
Eliyon's technology is the first successful large-scale implementation of knowledge extraction and aggregation of business information from web sources. Eliyon's automated tools continually visit millions of news sources, web sites, SEC filings and press release distribution sites. Using artificial intelligence and natural language processing, the tools "read" pages and extract specific information about people, companies, products, services and industries. Millions of records are extracted every day and then integrated with related information to create comprehensive profiles of people in business and of companies and organizations.
The resulting Eliyon database of more than 21 million profiles of business people includes virtually all executives in close to 1.5 million American companies, as well as millions of middle managers and individual contributors in corporate America. Every month some 500,000 new profiles are added and three million existing profiles are automatically updated by adding new information extracted from web sources. In addition, Eliyon has created a database of information on close to 1.5 million large and small American companies.
"Using a general purpose search engine to find business information is akin to using the phone book for sales prospecting. Eliyon provides a ten-fold advantage over general purpose search engines for business information by allowing users to tightly target their search for the best result, and learn a whole lot more in the process," said Mike Tyrrell, general partner at Venrock. "We believe Eliyon will define a new search category as it proves to be an absolutely indispensable business tool. Eliyon's value will grow as it expands beyond its present stand-alone information service, and increases distribution to become tightly integrated into a broad range of applications and web services."
"I am proud to be working with Venrock, a pioneer and a leader in the venture capital industry," said Jonathan Stern, CEO and founder of Eliyon Technologies. "Mike Tyrrell, who just joined our board of directors, brings vast experience and many insights to our business from his years at Spyglass, an early Internet company which licensed its product to Microsoft, a product now distributed as Internet Explorer. I look forward to working with Mike to expand Eliyon's business beyond its current subscription model and into other markets and applications."
Eliyon Technologies was initially incubated in Corex Technologies of Cambridge MA, the makers of CardScan, the leader in business card reading products. Jonathan Stern, founder and CEO of Eliyon, is also the founder and CEO of Corex Technologies. Within a few months, Eliyon was spun off to the shareholders of Corex and as a result, three Boston area ventures firms: Flagship Ventures, Ascent Venture Partners and Commonwealth Capital are significant shareholders of Eliyon.
About Eliyon Technologies
Eliyon Technologies uses automated content generation tools to create the most current and complete source of information on professionals and businesses in the U.S. With proprietary search, content creation and presentation technologies, Eliyon has developed the first enterprise-scale product that systematically reads web pages, recognizes and extracts business-related content, and then automatically creates up-to-date individual profiles of business professionals and companies. As of June 2004, the Eliyon database included more than 21 million profiles of business executives and mid-level managers, with over 25,000 new ones added and 100,000 profiles updated daily. Leading companies search the database for recruiting, competitive intelligence, research and more.
Eliyon's customers range from executive search firms to 25% of the Fortune 100, including companies such as AOL, Google, Oracle, Lockheed Martin, Wachovia, IBM, Microsoft, Staples and Yahoo!, among others. Eliyon is privately held and based in Cambridge, MA. For more information, visit www.eliyon.com or call toll-free: 866.201.7517.
About Venrock Associates
Venrock Associates was founded as the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller Family and continues a tradition of funding entrepreneurs that now spans over six decades. Laurance S. Rockefeller pioneered early stage venture financing in the 1930s. As one of most experienced venture firms in the United States, Venrock maintains a tradition of collaboration with talented entrepreneurs to establish successful, enduring companies. During its history Venrock has made over 300 investments in portfolio companies that have achieved an aggregate market capitalization of $1.2 trillion, combined annual revenues of $150 billion, and employees totaling over 773,000. In 2001, they closed Venrock Associates III, an $800 million fund. For more information, please visit the Web site at www.venrock.com.
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