Predictive Startup Recorded Future Raises $12M From Balderton And Google Ventures

There’s a lot of talk these days about what you can do with “big data.” Here’s one of the more eye-catching uses: A startup called Recorded Future pulls data from around the Web to give customers a better handle on — that’s right — the future.

The company just announced that it has raised $12 million in Series C funding from Balderton and Google Ventures. Balderton partner and former Business Objects CEO Bernard Liautaud is joining the board.

Recorded Future says it’s continually scanning “tens of thousands of high-quality, online news publications, blogs, public niche sources, trade publications, government web sites, financial databases and more.” Then it analyzes that content and visualizes the data in a way that should help you answer questions about what’s ahead.

For example, the demo video below includes mentions queries like: Where are world leaders traveling next month? What’s going down in Mexico City over the next 60 days? Which source best predicts correct Apple product releases? The Recorded Future website suggests that the company is targeting three main use cases — financial services, competitive intelligence, and defense and intelligence.

The company has now raised a total of $20 million, with past investors including In-Q-Tel (the venture arm of the CIA), IA Ventures, Atlas Venture, and Google Ventures. Co-founder and CEO Christopher Ahlberg says Recorded Future is coming out of “semi-stealth mode” today — a fuzzy term, since the company has already attracted some customers (including the Defense Department) and headlines, but one that suggests we’ll be hearing more from the company soon.