Google Invests In Stealth Startup That Aims To 'Accelerate Science'

Robin Wauters

Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

Google Ventures has quietly invested in a stealth startup called Wingu, reports StrategyFacts (subscription required).

Indeed, while the Google Ventures website lists four career opportunities for one of its portfolio companies located in Cambridge, Massachusetts without naming Wingu, the stealth startup published the exact same job openings on its job board, leaving nothing to the imagination.

Wingu is building a enterprise-grade cloud platform dubbed Elements that will enable research teams to collaborate more effectively and use data in ‘new ways’.

Here are the four main selling points of Wingu’s platform, according to its website:

MANAGE: Unify your cross-discipline teams on a common platform to share data and ideas.

ANALYZE: Drive decision-making with our analytical workflows and discovery tools.

SHARE: Connect your researchers across silos and geographical divides for better collaboration, coordination and communication.

PROTECT: Breathe easy knowing that your data is backed and protected by leading systems and security experts.

Wingu intends to distribute its research integration software on a subscription basis.

The startup’s proposition sounds similar to that of Mendeley, a research network. Other similar services include Academia.edu (which we likened to a “Geni for researchers”) and Questia. If you know of any others, feel free to share them in comments.

Financial-organization: Google Ventures
Launch Date: March 31, 2009

Google Ventures is the financially motivated venture capital arm of Google Inc., founded in 2009. Google Ventures invests in startups in industries including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and others. They aim to invest about $100 million a year, with deal sizes ranging from seed to late-stage investments of tens of millions of dollars, depending on the stage of the opportunity and the company’s need for capital. Google Ventures currently invests in the U.S. and has offices in...

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