Digital Reasoning was an American company headquartered in

Franklin, Tennessee Franklin is a city in and the county seat of Williamson County, Tennessee, United States. About south of Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville, it is one of the principal cities of the Nashville metropolitan area and Middle Tennessee. As of 2020 Uni ...

. It offered

cognitive computing Cognitive computing refers to technology platforms that, broadly speaking, are based on the scientific disciplines of artificial intelligence and signal processing. These platforms encompass machine learning, reasoning, natural language proce ...

services to intelligence agencies, financial institutions and healthcare organizations in the United States.

History

Digital Reasoning was founded in 2000 by Tim Estes, a

Knoxville Knoxville is a city in Knox County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. It is located on the Tennessee River and had a population of 190,740 at the 2020 United States census. It is the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division ...

-born philosophy senior at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...

with investment support from his mother, Dot Curry. It was headquartered in

, with offices in Washington, D.C., New York City and London. At its peak in August 2015, the Franklin headquarters had 100 employees, 30 of whom had top secret clearance. The firm presented its Synthesys software to the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

in 2002. They signed a contract with the

National Ground Intelligence Center The National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) is part of the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command. The NGIC provides scientific and technical intelligence (S&T) and general military intelligence (GMI) on foreign ground forces ...

, a subsidiary of the

United States Army Intelligence and Security Command The United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) is a direct reporting unit that conducts intelligence, security, and information operations for United States Army commanders, partners in the Intelligence Community, and natio ...

, in 2004. Synthesys was used to track enemies in the

War in Afghanistan War in Afghanistan, Afghan war, or Afghan civil war may refer to: *Conquest of Afghanistan by Alexander the Great (330 BC – 327 BC), the conquest of Afghanistan by the Macedonian Empire * Muslim conquests of Afghanistan, a series of campaigns in ...

from 2004 onwards. Six years later, in 2010, it received funding from

In-Q-Tel In-Q-Tel (IQT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the lates ...

, the venture capital firm of the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

. Since 2012, the firm commercialized Synthesys software into banks and hedge funds, including

UBS UBS Group AG (stylized simply as UBS) is a multinational investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland, with headquarters in both Zurich and Basel. It holds a strong foothold in all major financial centres as the ...

and

Point72 Asset Management Point72 Asset Management is an American hedge fund. It was founded in 2014 by Steve Cohen, after his previous company S.A.C. Capital Advisors pled guilty to insider trading charges. In 2018, the company reopened to external investors after a t ...

. Financial institutions use Synthesys to scan internal communications in search of unfamiliar patterns between employees, in terms of word-specific content, frequency and interpersonal connections. The software served as an electronic forsenics investigatory tool and automated communications monitoring to detect fraud, insider trading and other white collar crimes in order to comply with SEC and Sarbanes-Oxley financial regulations. In 2014, the firm received US$750,000 from the Tennessee Angel Fund of TNInvestco, a US$200 million fund from the State of Tennessee. It also received US$24 million from Credit Suisse Asset Management's NEXT Investors as well as

Goldman Sachs The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many internationa ...

. Other investors include the

Partnership for New York City The Partnership for New York City, formerly called the New York City Partnership, is a nonprofit membership organization consisting of a select group of nearly three hundred CEOs ("Partners") from New York City's top corporate, investment and ent ...

and the Nashville Capital Network. In 2016, with HCA as a tenet client, Digital Reasoning established a healthcare division led by Hal Andrews to leverage the Synthesys platform and proprietary NLP technologies to develop solutions for healthcare. In March 2018, the firm announced US$30 million in funding led by

BNP Paribas BNP Paribas (; sometimes referred to as BNPP or BNP) is a French multinational universal bank and financial services holding company headquartered in Paris. It was founded in 2000 from the merger of two of France's foremost financial instituti ...

and joined by

Barclays Barclays PLC (, occasionally ) is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services ...

and Square Capital. Previous investors Goldman Sachs, Nasdaq, Lemhi Ventures, HCA, and the Partnership Fund for New York City also joined the round. This investment round was tied to hiring Brett Jackson as CEO in April 2017 and moving Estes into a non-operating role as President with the objective to move the company's core business into profitability. In February 2019,

Macquarie Group Macquarie Group Limited (), more commonly known as Macquarie Bank, is an Australian multinational investment banking and financial services group headquartered in Sydney and listed on the ASX (). Macquarie's investment banking division is Au ...

invested an undisclosed amount in Digital Reasoning. Simultaneously, senior executive leaders responsible for operations, including CEO Jackson and COO Marten den Haring, departed the company. In April 2020, company announced that co-founder Tim Estes assumed a co-CEO role with Brook Hazelton, an existing investor. Hazelton and the board navigated an acquisition by financial technology software compan
Smarsh
in November 2020. Smarsh has maintained the Digital Reasoning compliance intelligence software as part of their financial technology services portfolio. Estes left Smarsh after the negotiated post-acquisition contractual period, followed by lawsuits and counter-suits in a fight to obtain financial incentive bonus payments which Smarsh contends Estes did not meet the criteria or fulfill the obligations to earn. In April 2022, Chris Cashwell led the successful spin-out of the Digital Reasoning healthcare division into its own start-up Azra AI. As of April 2023, Azra AI has expanded into nearly 300 hospitals with AI software automating the detection, triage and treatment of cancer across over 10 million patients' electronic medical records with recognition as the Technology Company Start-Up of the Year by the Nashville Technology Council in 2023.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Digital Reasoning Defunct software companies of the United States Companies based in Franklin, Tennessee Software companies established in 2000 Technology companies established in 2000