Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Ignition Partners Sees Early Exit As Facebook Gobbles Up AI Startup

Seattle-based venture investor Ignition Partners has seen a very, very quick exit--and potentially a lucrative multiple--as one of its most recent investments, Wit.ai, was acquired by Facebook today. Wit.ai is developing artificial intelligence and natural language processing software used for recognizing voice commands and in the "Internet of Things". Wit.ai had only raised $3M in seed funding--including funds from Ignition Partners--in a deal that was only announced in October of 2014. That investment was led by Andreessen Horowitz, and also included Ignition Partners, NEA, A-Grade, SVAngel, Eric Hahn, Alven Capital, and TenOneTen.