Enigma Technologies, Inc., is a

data science Data science is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses statistics, scientific computing, scientific methods, processing, scientific visualization, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge from potentially noisy, stru ...

and AI company headquartered in New York City that specializes in providing data and intelligence about businesses. The company is mainly known for Enigma Public, a now defunct library of public data. Using

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

, the company organizes and connects hundreds of sources to provide data about businesses for customers in a variety of use cases, from

financial services Financial services are service (economics), economic services tied to finance provided by financial institutions. Financial services encompass a broad range of tertiary sector of the economy, service sector activities, especially as concerns finan ...

compliance to

B2B marketing Business marketing is a marketing practice of individuals or organizations (including commercial businesses, governments, and institutions). It allows them to sell products or services to other companies or organizations, who either resell them, ...

and

insurance Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to protect ...

underwriting Underwriting (UW) services are provided by some large financial institutions, such as banks, insurance companies and investment houses, whereby they guarantee payment in case of damage or financial loss and accept the financial risk for liability ...

and lending. Enigma works with a number of

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States Joint-stock company#Closely held corporations and publicly traded corporations, corporations by ...

companies, including

American Express American Express Company or Amex is an American bank holding company and multinational financial services corporation that specializes in payment card industry, payment cards. It is headquartered at 200 Vesey Street, also known as American Expr ...

, ADP,

BB&T BB&T Corporation (previously known as the Branch Banking and Trust Company) was one of the largest banking and financial services firms in the United States, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 2019, BB&T announced its intentions to merge ...

Celgene Celgene Corporation, headquartered in Summit, New Jersey, was a pharmaceutical company that produced cancer and immunology drugs. Its primary products were Revlimid (lenalidomide), which is used in the treatment of multiple myeloma (63% of 2018 r ...

, Merck, and

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support E-commerce payment system, online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alter ...

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 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 Silicon Alley is an area of high tech companies centered around southern Manhattan's Flatiron district in New York City. The term was coined in the 1990s during the dot-com boom, alluding to California's Silicon Valley tech center. The term h ...

. Enigma was launched at the three-day 2013

TechCrunch Disrupt TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high-tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the co ...

Conference, and was the winner of the event's Startup Battlefield.Dickey, Megan Rose
"This TechCrunch Disrupt Winner Could Be The Future Of Search"
, ''

Business Insider ''Business Insider'' (stylized in all caps: BUSINESS INSIDER; known from 2021 to 2023 as INSIDER) is a New York City–based multinational financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Inside ...

'', May 2, 2013 In February 2013 they announced a $1.1 million seed funding round backed by TriplePoint Capital and Crosslink Capital, among others. This was augmented in early 2014 by a $4.5 million funding round which included additional investors

The New York Times Company The New York Times Company is an American mass media corporation that publishes ''The New York Times'' and its associated publications such as ''The New York Times International Edition'' and other media properties. The New York Times Company's ...

, Comcast Ventures, and

Ventures. In June 2013, the company announced a long-term beta testing partnership with

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, granting full access to their students and academic communities. In October 2013, the company was a finalist in the NYCEDC-sponsored "Take the HELM: Hire + Expand in Lower Manhattan" contest, and in June 2014 they were selected as participants in the FinTech Innovation Lab program. In August 2014, Enigma announced that Jeremy Bronfman would step down as CEO and be replaced by Hicham Oudghiri. In June 2015, Enigma secured a $28.2 million Series B funding round led by

New Enterprise Associates New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With over $25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of t ...

(NEA) with participation from

Two Sigma Two Sigma Investments, LP is an American hedge fund headquartered in New York City. It uses a variety of technological methods, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and distributed computing, for its trading strategies. The fir ...

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 from its previous site, Enigma.io, and ceased referring to itself with the ".io" qualifier. Enigma was named to

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

FinTech 50 List in February 2018. 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 Two Sigma Investments, LP is an American hedge fund headquartered in New York City. It uses a variety of technological methods, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and distributed computing, for its trading strategies. The fir ...

, and the Partnership Fund for NYC also participated. This was the inaugural investment for both BB&T and MetLife.

Enigma Public

Enigma Public was a

data warehouse In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for Business intelligence, reporting and data analysis and is a core component of business intelligence. Data warehouses are central Re ...

website which provided an aggregated collection of public

data Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted for ...

from international

government agencies A government agency or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government (bureaucracy) that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, ...

, 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 In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

, which also provided a collection of

data analytics Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data, which also falls under and directly relates to the umbrella term, data sci ...

tools. Users could register for a free rate-limited account to receive programmatic access via their

web API A web API is an application programming interface (API) for either a web server or a web browser. As a web development concept, it can be related to a web application's client side (including any web frameworks being used). A server-side web AP ...

, while unfettered or commercial access was available for a fee.Singer, Natasha
"A Harvest of Company Details, All in One Basket"
, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', March 15, 2014 Data republished by Enigma was reusable (with attribution) for free by

journalists A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

, so it was occasionally used as a primary or corroborating source for analyses on everything from

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

aerial surveillanceAldhous, Peter
"Spies in the Skies"
"

BuzzFeed BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet mass media, media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John Seward Johnson III, John S. Johnson III to ...

", April 6, 2016 to house fire incidentsSwanstrom, Ryan
"Collaboration and Open Data Helping to Prevent House Fires"
, "Datakind", October 2, 2015 to U.S. government shipping records. The company redesigned and updated Enigma Public in June 2017 in an effort to make public data more accessible and easy to use. This redesign included features that enabled users to identity connections and interpretations within the data quickly and easily by focusing

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

and linked datasets. The updated platform also curated featured datasets and collections, including those obtained by

Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request: * Freedom of Information Act (United States) of 1966 * F ...

requests. In August 2018, Enigma released a

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (prog ...

SDK for Enigma Public, designed to make it easier to locate and import public data into a

Jupyter notebook Project Jupyter (pronounced "Jupiter") is a project to develop open-source software, open standards, and services for interactive computing across multiple programming languages. It was spun off from IPython in 2014 by Fernando Pérez and Bria ...

or any other Python project using the Enigma Public API. Enigma Public was deactivated on March 24, 2020.

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. 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 From October 1 to October 17, 2013, the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government entered a Government shutdown in the United States, shutdown and curtailed most routine operations because neither Appropriations b ...

impacted employees of every government agency. 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 American National Red Cross is a Nonprofit organization, nonprofit Humanitarianism, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and disaster preparedness education in the United States. Clara Barton founded ...

. The tool uses data from the

American Housing Survey The American Housing Survey (AHS) is a statistical survey funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is one of the executive departments of the ...

and

American Community Survey The American Community Survey (ACS) is an annual demographics survey program conducted by the United States Census Bureau. It regularly gathers information previously contained only in the long form of the United States census, decennial census ...

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.

Data

Enigma combines hundreds of public and private sources of data, including government agencies, organizations, and websites, into a single

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

. Enigma has obtained a vast amount of data via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, including New York

Metropolitan Transit Authority Metropolitan Transit Authority may refer to: * Metropolitan Transit Authority (Boston), succeeded by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) * Metropolitan Transit Authority (Victoria), Melbourne, Australia * Erie Metropolitan Trans ...

accident reports and a log of all FOIA requests made to the

Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...

. Enigma provides free basic firmographic data about millions of U.S. businesses via its

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

Features

Enigma provides access to its data through a web-based

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

and an API. Tools are provided in the interface for performing basic

statistical analysis Statistical inference is the process of using data analysis to infer properties of an underlying probability distribution.Upton, G., Cook, I. (2008) ''Oxford Dictionary of Statistics'', OUP. . Inferential statistical analysis infers properties of ...

, 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 Comma-separated values (CSV) is a text file format that uses commas to separate values, and newlines to separate records. A CSV file stores tabular data (numbers and text) in plain text, where each line of the file typically represents one data ...

or make

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

requests to the provided API. The company also produces interactive data visualizations which provide visual interfaces for particular individual datasets."U.S. Daily Temperature Anomalies 1964-2013"
Accessed July 21, 2014 On May 11, 2016, Enigma announced the launch of ParseKit, now called "Concourse", their proprietary software for ETL and

data integration Data integration refers to the process of combining, sharing, or synchronizing data from multiple sources to provide users with a unified view. There are a wide range of possible applications for data integration, from commercial (such as when a ...

, which had been developed internally via

dogfooding Eating your own dog food or "dogfooding" is the practice of using one's own products or services. This can be a way for an organization to test its products in real-world usage using product management techniques. Hence dogfooding can act as qual ...

to acquire their public datasets. In September 2018, Enigma announced its use of

knowledge graph In knowledge representation and reasoning, a knowledge graph is a knowledge base that uses a Graph (discrete mathematics), graph-structured data model or topology to represent and operate on data. Knowledge graphs are often used to store interl ...

s 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

Elasticsearch Elasticsearch is a Search engine (computing), search engine based on Apache Lucene, a free and open-source search engine. It provides a distributed, Multitenancy, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and schema ...

results, to improve entity resolution.

History

Enigma Public

Enigma Labs

Data

Features

References

Further reading