Completes investment into Oxford Uni start-up

RNS Number : 2598X

IP Group PLC

13 February 2012

 



 

FOR RELEASE ON

13 FEBRUARY 2012

IP Group completes investment into Oxford University 'sentiment analysis' start-up TheySay

IP Group plc (LSE: IPO) ("IP Group" or "the Company" or "the Group"), the developer of intellectual property based businesses, is pleased to announce that it has completed an  investment of up to £500,000 into a 'sentiment analysis' start-up from the Computer Science Department of the University of Oxford.

This is the first time that IP Group has invested into a company based on research from the Computer Science Department of the University of Oxford and is also the Group's first investment into a start-up from Isis Innovation Ltd's 'Isis Software Incubator'. IP Group's long-term commercialisation agreement at Oxford covers the University of Oxford's Department of Chemistry and the Group also has a strategic stake in Technikos LLP, a specialist technology fund with a long term commercialisation agreement with the University of Oxford's Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME).

IP Group has committed a total of up to £500,000, subject to certain milestones being met, into TheySay Limited ("TheySay"), which is developing software to understand the tone and sentiment of written materials. Assuming the full amount is invested, the Group will have a 40% undiluted beneficial interest in TheySay.

Understanding sentiment is a proven source of competitive advantage for businesses, government entities, public sector bodies, political organisations and individuals keen to monitor and measure what is being said about them on the internet. TheySay's software is likely to appeal to companies across a wide range of sectors including the finance sector; a hedge fund was launched in London last year based on research from the University of Manchester and Indiana University which showed that mood states from various tweets could collectively predict swings in the Dow Jones Industrial Average with near-90 percent accuracy.

Alan Aubrey, Chief Executive Officer of IP Group, said: "TheySay's contrarian approach to sentiment analysis is proving more accurate than traditional algorithms and could be of real interest to a broad range of companies looking to make strategic decisions based on, or aided by knowledge of, whether sentiment is generally positive or negative. We are excited about TheySay's prospects and pleased to have made our first investment into a start-up from the Isis Software Incubator."

TheySay's approach of employing linguistic intelligence to complement machine learning techniques enables new levels of insight and transparency. Exhaustive independent research commissioned by an independent third-party has shown the software to be capable of best-in-class results on key performance metrics.

TheySay's core product is "AffectR", a platform that employs a novel "knowledge-rich" approach to text analytics. It can extract the sentiment portrayed towards a specified entity in a given passage of text. Where existing alternatives focus on holistic machine learning algorithms that view sentiment expressions and clues in text as statistical tendencies, AffectR takes a deep linguistic approach that allows it to interpret sentiment computationally.

Tom Hockaday, Managing Director of Isis Innovation, said: "The Isis Software Incubator was set up to provide practical, commercial support and mentoring for ventures like TheySay, which has scope and potential across many industries."

For more information, please contact:

IP Group plc	www.ipgroupplc.com
Alan Aubrey, Chief Executive Officer	[phone]
Liz Vaughan-Adams, Communications	[phone] / 07979 853 802 [e-mail]
FTI Consulting
Ben Atwell, John Dineen	[phone]
TheySay Ltd	www.TheySayAnalytics.com

Notes for editors

About IP Group

IP Group is a leading UK intellectual property ("IP") commercialisation company, developing technology innovations primarily from its research intensive partner universities. The Group offers more than traditional venture capital, providing its companies with access to business building expertise, networks, recruitment and business support.

The Company's portfolio comprises holdings in over 60 companies including Oxford Nanopore Technologies, the DNA sequencing development company, Revolymer, best known for its removable chewing gum and Xeros, which has received many accolades for its revolutionary clothes washing techniques with a much reduced requirement for water.

The portfolio includes early stage to mature businesses and has exposure to five main sectors - Energy & Renewables, Medical Equipment & Supplies, Pharma & Biotech, IT & Communications and Chemicals & Materials. To date, thirteen of the portfolio companies IP Group has backed have listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange and one on PLUS Markets.

Founded in 2001, IP Group listed on AIM in October 2003 and moved to the Official List in June 2006. The Group now has long-term partnerships with twelve core universities including those under its commercialisation agreement with Fusion IP plc.

For more information, please visit our website at http://www.ipgroupplc.com/.

About TheySay

TheySay has developed a revolutionary approach to sentiment analysis, based on Computational Linguistics research carried out at the University of Oxford, UK. The company's software performs exhaustive fine-grained analysis, resulting in accurate human-like sentiment reasoning. The approach of employing linguistic intelligence to complement machine learning techniques enables new levels of insight and transparency, while providing best-in-class results on key performance metrics (independently verified by exhaustive third-party studies).

About Isis Innovation

Isis Innovation is the research and technology commercialisation company of the University of Oxford. The Technology Transfer and Oxford University Consulting divisions provide access to technological developments and expertise from University of Oxford researchers, through intellectual property licensing, spin-out company formation, material sales and consulting.

Isis is the highest University patent filer in the UK, has attracted investment into over 65 spin-out companies since 2000, and in the last financial year provided expertise to over 150 clients in 22 countries. Through the Isis Enterprise division, Isis offers innovation management to university, government and industrial clients around the world.

For updates on innovations from Oxford, follow Isis on LinkedIn and Twitter or subscribe at

www.isis-innovation.com

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