DataSift founder’s new startup Cognitive Logic raises $3 million in seed funding

Cognitive Logic, a new startup from the founder of DataSift, has raised $3 million in _seed funding_ from Upfront Ventures and IA Ventures.

The startup, led by Nick Halstead, is looking at combining different datasets across businesses to enhance the insight that can be parsed while not infringing on privacy and working within the framework of data laws, especially in the EU.

It's an exceptionally large round for a European seed-stage startup, even in its funding epicentre, the United Kingdom. In fact, Cognitive Logic has only really existed for about 2 weeks, when Halstead was joined by the first staffers and was 're-incorporated' in the US.

“DataSift was focused on social data but what I realised when dealing with a lot of big corporates, they weren’t tapping into the knowledge they have in those companies,” said Halstead, who spent eight years at DataSift.

Cognitive Logic claims to have a solution to analyse large amounts of data without revealing any personally identifiable information (PII), opposed to keeping data in silos to avoid any privacy infringements.

Under this model, according to the startup, businesses like finance and retail can share data sets and gain insights from them. Healthcare is another area that is ripe for this technology, said Halstead.

“I believe there’s a way for value to be extracted without identifying anybody individually but most importantly, a technology stack that can allow companies to analyse their own data, join to other people’s data without the data ever leaving the data centre and that’s the innovation that we’re working on,” Halstead told tech.eu.

“Nick is amongst the smartest thinkers I know dealing with large datasets in real-time and with privacy,” added Mark Suster, Upfront Ventures managing partner. “Given a chance to work together again, my answer was ‘absolutely’ even before asking what his company would do.”

**Also read:**

DataSift CEO Nick Halstead steps down (October 2015)

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