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Metaweb Technologies has raised $57.0M across 2 funding rounds.
Key people at Metaweb Technologies.
Metaweb Technologies has raised $57.0M in total across 2 funding rounds.
Metaweb Technologies, Inc. developed Freebase, an open, collaboratively built database designed to organize and make accessible a vast array of global information. This platform provided a semantic data infrastructure that allowed users to query, contribute to, and integrate structured knowledge into various web applications and services. The technology sought to enhance the web’s capability to understand and connect disparate pieces of data through a shared model.
The company was founded in July 2005 by Danny Hillis, Veda Hlubinka-Cook, and John Giannandrea. Spun out of Applied Minds, their collective insight centered on the need for a more robust and organized infrastructure for the burgeoning web. Hillis, a notable computer scientist with a background in parallel computing and AI, along with his co-founders, envisioned a system that could systematically map and link the world's facts.
Freebase was intended for a broad community of users, including developers, researchers, and anyone seeking to build applications or integrate structured information into their digital projects. Metaweb’s overarching vision was to create a comprehensive, universally accessible knowledge base that would serve as a foundational layer for future web intelligence, empowering a more informed and interconnected digital landscape.
Key people at Metaweb Technologies.
Metaweb Technologies has raised $57.0M across 2 funding rounds. Most recently, it raised $42.0M Series B in January 2008.
| Date | Round | Lead Investors | Other Investors | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 1, 2008 | $42M Series B | — | Benchmark, Redpoint Ventures, Eric Hahn | Announced |
| Feb 1, 2006 | $15M Series A | — | Benchmark, Redpoint Ventures, Eric Hahn | Announced |
Metaweb Technologies has raised $57.0M in total across 2 funding rounds.
Metaweb Technologies's investors include Benchmark, Redpoint Ventures, Eric Hahn.
Metaweb Technologies, Inc. was a San Francisco-based technology company founded in 2005 that developed Freebase, an open, shared database aimed at structuring the world's knowledge through a semantic web infrastructure.[1][2][3] It served developers, researchers, and users seeking structured data access, solving the problem of disorganized online information by enabling collaborative editing and querying of interconnected facts, akin to a graph database precursor to modern knowledge graphs.[1][3] The company raised significant funding—$15 million in Series A (2006) from investors like Benchmark Capital and Omidyar Network, followed by $42.5 million in Series B (2008) led by Goldman Sachs—but was acquired by Google in 2010 for an undisclosed sum, with Freebase later shut down in 2016 after data migration to Wikidata.[1]
(Note: A separate, unrelated entity called Metaweb Technologies Pvt. Ltd. exists as an Indian web development firm offering services like e-commerce sites and SEO, but it does not match the primary historical context of the query.[4])
Metaweb Technologies spun out from Applied Minds, a technology think-tank, in July 2005.[2] It was co-founded by Danny Hillis (inventor and Applied Minds co-founder known for parallel computing), Veda Hlubinka-Cook, and John Giannandrea (AI expert who later became Google's chief technologist).[1] The idea emerged from a vision to create an open alternative to proprietary databases, building on semantic web concepts to crowdsource structured knowledge via Freebase, which launched publicly and gained early traction through its API and partnerships.[1][3] Pivotal moments included securing high-profile funding rounds and the 2010 Google acquisition, which integrated its tech into Google's knowledge efforts.[1]
Metaweb rode the early semantic web and structured data trend in the mid-2000s, amid rising interest in AI-driven knowledge extraction post-Tim Berners-Lee's vision.[1] Timing was ideal: Google's search dominance highlighted needs for entity-based understanding, influencing the shift from keywords to knowledge graphs—Freebase directly powered Google's Knowledge Graph launch in 2012.[1] Market forces like exploding web data and open-source movements favored it, and its acquisition amplified impact by seeding Wikidata and modern LLMs' structured training data.[1]
Metaweb's legacy endures in today's AI era, where knowledge graphs underpin tools like Google's search and generative models—its 2010 acquisition was prescient amid surging demand for structured data in LLMs and agents.[1] No active operations remain post-2016 Freebase shutdown, but alumni like Giannandrea continue shaping Big Tech AI strategies. Expect its influence to grow indirectly as semantic tech revives in vector databases and RAG systems, tying back to its original mission of open, shared world knowledge now powering trillion-parameter models.
