New Funds for Natural Language Analyst Luminoso

Natural language specialist Luminoso has closed a $12.6m Series A1 funding round, which it will use to expand its team. Former CEO Catherine Havasi has moved to the role of Chief Strategy Officer, while Fairlead Advisors Partner Adam Carte becomes the firm's new Chief Exec.

Based in Cambridge, MA, Luminoso was founded out of MIT's Media Lab in 2010 and develops technology which applies artificial intelligence to the process of text mining, to identify shifting sentiment, patterns, underlying themes and 'buried' intelligence. The firm can analyze unstructured data natively in thirteen languages, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Arabic, and its insight is used to streamline companies' contact center processes, monitor brand perception, and optimize customer experience.

Co-founder Havasi (pictured) will now lead Luminoso's expansion of its markets and further adapt its products to the needs of clients; while Carte will focus on operations and managing growth. The latest funding round, which was led by SD Porter Holdings and Raptor Holdco, adds to $6.5m raised in 2014 and $1.5m of seed funding raised in 2012.

Havasi says of the news: 'Luminoso was formed to fundamentally change how computers understand language by teaching them common sense about the underlying concepts behind the words. With this funding, we can advance this common-sense AI into more global companies and enable them to automate a conceptual understanding of high volume customer communications in thirteen of the world's major languages. Luminoso's fourteenth language, Indonesian, will be available later this year'.

Web site: www.luminoso.com .