Enigma Technologies

Enigma Technologies, Inc.

Company type	Private
Industry	Data as a service Open data Internet Technology Financial services
Founded	2012;12 years ago (2012)
Headquarters	New York, New York, US
Key people	Marc DaCosta: chairman, co-founder Hicham Oudghiri: CEO, co-founder Scott Sandel: board member, NEA Ben Narasin: board member Andrew Cleland: board member, Comcast Ventures
Number of employees	75
Website	nigma.com

Enigma Technologies, Inc., is a data science company headquartered in New York City that specializes in providing data and intelligence about businesses. ^[1] The company is mainly known for Enigma Public, a now defunct library of public data. ^{[2] [3]}

Using machine learning and artificial intelligence, the company organizes and connects hundreds of sources to provide data about businesses for customers in a variety of use cases, from financial services compliance to B2B marketing and insurance underwriting and lending. ^{[4] [5] [6]} Enigma works with a number of Fortune 500 companies, including American Express, ADP, BB&T, Celgene, Merck, and PayPal. ^{[7] [8]}

History

Enigma Technologies, Inc. was founded by Marc DaCosta (Chairman, co-founder) and Hicham Oudghiri (CEO, co-founder). The founders' curiosity was drawn into focus by the 2008 financial crisis. They were frustrated ^[9] that relevant public data was available, and should have shed light on these two occurrences, but the world still struggled to connect the dots to understand how and why these crises happened or to stop both altogether. They sought to make data connected, open, and actionable – and Enigma was born. The company currently has more than 100 employees and is headquartered in NYC's Silicon Alley. ^[1]

Enigma was launched at the three-day 2013 TechCrunch Disrupt Conference, and was the winner of the event's Startup Battlefield. ^{[10] [11]} In February 2013 they announced a $1.1 million seed funding round backed by TriplePoint Capital and Crosslink Capital, among others. ^[12] This was augmented in early 2014 by a $4.5 million funding round which included additional investors The New York Times Company, Comcast Ventures, and American Express Ventures. ^{[13] [14]}

In June 2013, the company announced a long-term beta testing partnership with Stanford University and Harvard University, granting full access to their students and academic communities. ^[15] In October 2013, the company was a finalist in the NYCEDC-sponsored "Take the HELM: Hire + Expand in Lower Manhattan" contest, ^[16] and in June 2014 they were selected as participants in the FinTech Innovation Lab program. ^{[17] [18]}

In August 2014, Enigma announced that Jeremy Bronfman would step down as CEO and be replaced by Hicham Oudghiri. ^[19]

In June 2015, Enigma secured a $28.2 million Series B funding round ^[20] led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with participation from Two Sigma Ventures and New York City Investment Fund, as well as existing investors including American Express Ventures, Comcast Ventures and The New York Times Company.

In April 2017, Enigma moved its website to Enigma.com ^[21] from its previous site, Enigma.io, and ceased referring to itself with the ".io" qualifier.

Enigma was named to Forbes FinTech 50 List in February 2018. ^[4]

In September 2018, Enigma announced $95 million in new funds to expand its network and platform that connects real-world and enterprise data to power key workflows. Existing investor NEA led this funding, which included new investments from strategic FinTech investors BB&T, Capital One Growth Ventures, MetLife and Third Point along with venture firm Glynn Capital. Early investors Comcast Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Two Sigma Ventures, and the Partnership Fund for NYC also participated. This was the inaugural investment for both BB&T and MetLife. ^{[22] [23] [24] [25]}

Enigma Public

Enigma Public was a data warehouse website which provided an aggregated collection of public data from international government agencies, organizations, and businesses. It was at one point the broadest collection of public data that is open and searchable by everyone, and could be accessed through Enigma's web-based user interface, which also provided a collection of data analytics tools. Users could register for a free rate-limited account to receive programmatic access via their web API, while unfettered or commercial access was available for a fee. ^{[26] [3]}

Data republished by Enigma was reusable (with attribution) for free by journalists, so it was occasionally used as a primary or corroborating source for analyses on everything from FBI aerial surveillance ^[27] to house fire incidents ^[28] to U.S. government shipping records. ^[29]

The company redesigned and updated Enigma Public in June 2017 in an effort to make public data more accessible and easy to use. ^[30] This redesign included features that enabled users to identity connections and interpretations within the data quickly and easily by focusing metadata and linked datasets. The updated platform also curated featured datasets and collections, including those obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests. ^[3]

In August 2018, Enigma released a Python SDK for Enigma Public, designed to make it easier to locate and import public data into a Jupyter notebook or any other Python project using the Enigma Public API. ^{[31] [32]}

Enigma Public was deactivated on March 24, 2020. ^[33]

Enigma Labs

Enigma has built a number of open data tools that serve a public good, called Enigma Labs. Each project sheds light on critical topics of the day and enables and informs civic action. ^[34]

The company's first Lab was launched in October 2013, as a real-time visualization tracking how the United States federal government shutdown of 2013 impacted employees of every government agency. ^[35]

In 2014, Enigma partnered with the City of New Orleans to better identify which neighborhoods were least likely to have smoke alarms. This project, called Smoke Signals, was soon scaled to cities across the United States in partnership with DataKind and the American Red Cross. The tool uses data from the American Housing Survey and American Community Survey to create a block-level assessment of whether residents are likely to have a working smoke alarm in more than 175 cities in the United States and is available as an interactive map and downloadable CSV files. Cities can also upload their own historical fire incident data to improve the model for their area. ^{[36] [37] [38] [39]}

Data

Enigma combines hundreds of public and private sources of data, including government agencies, organizations, and websites, into a single database. ^[11] Enigma has obtained a vast amount of data via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, ^[3] including New York Metropolitan Transit Authority accident reports ^[40] and a log of all FOIA requests made to the Securities and Exchange Commission. ^[40] Enigma provides free basic firmographic data about millions of U.S. businesses via its API. ^[41]

Features

Enigma provides access to its data through a web-based graphical user interface and an API. Tools are provided in the interface for performing basic statistical analysis, such as finding the minimum, maximum or mean value of any numerical data column. For further analysis, users may either use the interface to export data to a CSV file or make HTTP requests to the provided API. ^[26] The company also produces interactive data visualizations which provide visual interfaces for particular individual datasets. ^{[42] [43]}

On May 11, 2016, Enigma announced the launch of ParseKit, now called "Concourse", their proprietary software for ETL and data integration, which had been developed internally via dogfooding to acquire their public datasets.

In September 2018, Enigma announced its use of knowledge graphs as the vehicle for ingesting, standardizing, and adapting data from tables into representations of relationships delivered to users. Enigma uses linking, ontology mapping, and entity resolution capabilities to uncover new information about businesses and to deliver linked information through an API. Enigma's knowledge graphs integrate machine learning of Elasticsearch results, to improve entity resolution. ^[9]

References

1. "About Enigma: The Connected Data Company". Enigma. Retrieved July 6, 2018.
2. "Enigma Makes Unearthing And Sifting Through Public Data A Breeze". TechCrunch. Retrieved July 6, 2018.
3. "Public Data Is More Important Than Ever–And Now It's Easier To Find". Co.Design. June 20, 2017. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
4. "Enigma on the Forbes Fintech 50 List". Forbes. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
5. Allison, Ian (July 19, 2017). "Enigma gives hedge funds the missing links between a hundred thousand datasets". International Business Times UK. Retrieved July 6, 2018.
6. "Independents JUST and Enigma Launch Just Global". www.businesswire.com. November 11, 2020. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
7. Lohr, Steve (June 22, 2015). "Data Mining Start-Up Enigma to Expand Commercial Business". The New York Times. Retrieved July 6, 2018.
8. "Enigma Taps Industry Expert from American Express to Lead Financial Services Compliance Solutions". PRWeb. Retrieved September 28, 2017.
9. "Enigma Raises Another $95M to Bridge the Gap Between Data and Business Decisions". Alleywatch. Retrieved September 25, 2018.
10. Velazco, Chris. "And the Winner of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 Is… Enigma!", TechCrunch , Wednesday May 1, 2013
11. Dickey, Megan Rose. "This TechCrunch Disrupt Winner Could Be The Future Of Search", Business Insider , May 2, 2013
12. Lawler, Ryan. "Enigma.io Raises $1.1 Million To Structure The World Of Big Data", TechCrunch , February 27, 2013
13. Novet, Jordan. "Enigma reels in $4.5M to collect and organize loads of the world's public data", VentureBeat , January 30, 2014
14. "The New York Times Company". The New York Times Company. Retrieved August 26, 2024.
15. Marostica, Matt. "Enigma statistical data mining tool now available to Stanford community", Stanford University Libraries Blog, June 25, 2013
16. Weiss, Lois. "Helming Downtown" ^{[ permanent dead link ]}, New York Post , October 22, 2013
17. "Six Entrepreneurs Showcase Cutting-Edge Financial Services Solutions at 2014 FinTech Innovation Lab Demo Day in New York", Partnership for New York City , June 26, 2014
18. Crosman, Penny. "Six Fintech Startups That Wowed Bankers", American Banker , July 1, 2014
19. "Hicham Oudghiri named Enigma CEO", Enigma Blog, August 26, 2014
20. "Enigma Raises $28.2 Million in Series B Funding to Extend Enterprise Operations and Add Talent | Business Wire" . Retrieved August 26, 2024.
21. Enigma "Say hello to the new Enigma.com", Enigma (Company), April 5, 2017
22. King, Kate. "Venture Funding Flows to New York City Tech Startups". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved September 25, 2018.
23. Burns, Hilary. "BB&T makes first fintech foray in bid to boost digital banking". American Banker. Retrieved September 25, 2018.
24. O'Donnell, Anthony. "Enigma Raises $95M for Strategy Connecting Enterprise Data to External Sources". Insurance Innovation Reporter. Retrieved September 25, 2018.
25. Marinova, Polina. "Term Sheet -- Wednesday, September 19" . Retrieved September 19, 2018.
26. Singer, Natasha. "A Harvest of Company Details, All in One Basket", The New York Times , March 15, 2014
27. Aldhous, Peter. "Spies in the Skies", "BuzzFeed", April 6, 2016
28. Swanstrom, Ryan. "Collaboration and Open Data Helping to Prevent House Fires", "Datakind", October 2, 2015
29. "Meet The Workers Who Sewed Donald Trump Clothing For A Few Dollars A Day". BuzzFeed. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
30. "The New Enigma Public". Enigma. June 19, 2017. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
31. "Enigma Public SDK". Python Package Index. Python Software Foundation. Retrieved September 25, 2018.
32. "Using the New Enigma Python SDK". Enigma Blog. Retrieved September 25, 2018.
33. "Enigma Public deactivating on March 24th". Hacker News. Retrieved March 31, 2020.
34. "Enigma Labs". Enigma. Retrieved June 20, 2018.
35. "The Whole Government Shutdown In One Simple, Beautiful Chart". Business Insider. Retrieved June 20, 2018.
36. Lohr, Steve (June 22, 2015). "Data Mining Start-Up Enigma to Expand Commercial Business". The New York Times. Retrieved June 20, 2018.{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
37. Condliffe, Jamie. "This Map Helps Predict Which Homes Need a Fire Alarm". Gizmodo. Retrieved June 20, 2018.
38. "The Smart Map Using Open Data to Prevent Fire Tragedies". Motherboard. September 25, 2015. Retrieved June 20, 2018.
39. "Predicting Fire Risk: From New Orleans to a Nationwide Tool". Data-Smart City Solutions. Retrieved June 20, 2018.
40. "Enigma Public". Enigma. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
41. "Welcome". Enigma Docs. Retrieved January 6, 2021.
42. Hickey, Walter. "The Whole Government Shutdown In One Simple, Beautiful Chart", Business Insider , October 8, 2013
43. "U.S. Daily Temperature Anomalies 1964-2013", Accessed July 21, 2014

Further reading

• "C-SUITE: Enigma CEO Jeremy Bronfman". February 3, 2014. AOL News.
• DaCosta, Marc (June 5, 2014). "Rob Kalin, Founder of Etsy [and Marc DaCosta, co-founder of Enigma]". From Scratch (Interview). Interviewed by Jessica Harris. New York: NPR.
• Velazco, Chris (April 30, 2013). "Enigma Makes Unearthing And Sifting Through Public Data A Breeze". Techcrunch. Accessed July 18, 2014.
• Zimmerman, Ed (October 3, 2015). "The Enigma of Running a Bicoastal Series B Venture Round". Forbes. Accessed October 3, 2015.