ClearForest

ClearForest was a private software company founded in 1998 with headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts and a development center in Or Yehuda, Israel. The company developed and marketed text analytics and text mining solutions under the ClearForest Text Analytics Suite brand. Its products included OpenCalais (a free web service for named-entity recognition and automatic metadata generation), Semantic Web Services for natural language processing, the Gnosis Firefox extension, and Harvest (a real-time machine-readable news service). ClearForest's solutions were used for equity valuation by hedge funds, metadata creation for publishers, voice-of-customer research, and quality early warning systems for manufacturers. The company was venture-backed, with investors including Greylock Ventures, DB Capital Partners, Pitango, Walden Israel, Booz Allen, JP Morgan Partners, and HarbourVest Partners. Reuters acquired ClearForest in April 2007 for an estimated $25 million, subsequently launching the Open Calais service built on ClearForest technology.