What is In Q Tel? The CIA's Secretive Venture Capital Fund
Transcript
venture capital firms are set up to make money they carefully distribute capital through investments to own businesses and have power on company boards with a view to spinning a profit in the future however not many people know that the cia also have their own venture capital arm called incutel but why would an intelligence agency need to invest in startups and how does inquitel work here's how it happened incatel was founded in 1999 to be a non-profit vc fund funded by the intelligence community to extend the agency's r d efforts into the private sector founded just around the time of the dot-com boom as internet businesses were taking off the cia and other agencies started to think that they were possibly missing out on cutting-edge technology which may come in handy to defend the country in future according to people in the know the cia did not and could not compete for it innovation and talent with the same speed and agility that those in the commercial marketplace whose businesses are driven by internet time and profit could so in february 1999 the cia launched incutel with 28 million dollars in order to take advantage of new technologies which would not normally want to associate themselves with the government but by reversing the process and assisting entrepreneurs incutel focused on innovation and entrepreneurship rather than making quick money or putting pressure on businesses this then helps the national security effort and has seen iqt launch new initiatives such as iqt emerge which is trying to make spy-like technology commercially available to encourage innovation and collaboration between public and private sectors they also launched iqt international iqt labs to explore things that remain unsolved across public and private sectors and be next to focus on biotech to work on infectious diseases iqt is there to try to anticipate technology questions and the vc fund is therefore relied upon as an organization that's trying to predict the future always looking ahead to power their partners ahead of the technology curve to ensure the national security of the u.s and its allies iqt emerges launch in 2020 was initiated by trump to collaborate with the private sector to improve research capabilities they hope the funding will continue to rise under biden after he pledged nine billion dollars to modernize technology across federal governments after the solar winds breach whilst the amount of money that inkitel has access to is unknown what we do know is that they received 495.3 million dollars over five years until the end of 2018 as they receive annual investment capital from the cia in 2005 they had 37 million dollars with returns at 26 percent and in 2014 it was suggested that they managed 327 million dollars inkytel invests between 500 000 to 3 million in startups taking an advisory role on the company's board which helps to guide product development but also to discover news before anyone else as a not-for-profit any excess monies are then reinvested back into inkitel and sometimes even given to employees who are forced to invest 20 to 40 percent of their salary into the funds now that we know more about inkitel's background what do they actually invest in well inkytel focuses its investments on security businesses this includes working with safeweb to create an internet privacy product to protect confidential communications they also work with intelliseq to develop a web-based intelligence agent and knowledge discovery technology they've previously worked with voxel 8 arivo and fuel 3d within 3d scanning and printing and work in collaboration with keyhole the business behind google earth as well as palantir peter thiel's secretive data business despite this revolutionary technology there remains some resistance to change within the cia with not invented here syndrome a common problem incutel therefore set up their own interface center to act as the marketing link to promote iqt's projects within the cia but also to be the voice for the cia within inkitel in order to focus their efforts on certain technological solutions arguably the most important integration has been the presidential information dissemination system or pids an electronic tool to brief the president-elect between presidential transitions the department for defense and darpa are calling for their own versions of inkitel to encourage innovation within the defense space that's thanks to iqt's commercial partners crediting them with feeding technological innovation and providing the ultimate seal of approval for businesses due to the toughest due diligence process do you think that inkytel is a good idea leave us a comment below with your thoughts and that's how it happened thanks for watching [Music] you