True Knowledge attracts new funds

I commented on UK-based True Knowledge and their search for finance at the start of this month, and tonight Venture Beat breaks the news that they've concluded a $4 million funding round led by existing investor Octopus Ventures.

This funding, which brings the total raised by the company in the past twelve months to $5.4 million (£2.7 million),

"will allow the company to expand its management team, further develop its products and move to a roll-out in the next 12 months."

True Knowledge Chairman, William Reeve, commented that;

"True Knowledge's exciting technology has impressed everybody who's seen it over the last few months and it is terrific for the team, as well as for Cambridge and the UK as a whole, that this confidence has been reflected in one of the biggest pre-revenue fundraisings in the European venture sector this year"

Although this latest investment may be all that Reeve says it is, I'm no closer to an answer to the question I posed earlier this month as no one is talking about how much of the company was given up in exchange for these funds.

Unlike Microsoft-acquired Powerset, with which there are many similarities, True Knowledge is not restricted to 'merely' offering a better way to search Wikipedia. Instead, the company is pursuing a model closer to that of the (currently) more richly resourced Metaweb.

It will be interesting to see how both companies fare in their scramble to gather data to themselves. There's certainly plenty to go around.

Congratulations to all at True Knowledge, and we'll be watching closely to see where this interesting company goes next.

Update: Mike Butcher, my source for the original story, also comments...