Recorded Future

In 2007, co-founders Christopher Ahlberg and Staffan Truvé, both Ph.D.s in computer science from Chalmers University of Technology, filed for Recorded Future's first patent (granted in 2013 as United States patent US8468153B2) – Data Analysis System with Automated Query and Visualization Environment Setup. The patent was used for continuous collection and processing of data and information from sources across the open, deep, and dark web, facilitated by machine learning. Recorded Future was officially incorporated in 2009.

The company received initial funding from Google and In-Q-Tel, which was reported in a July 2010 introduction to Recorded Future published by Wired.

When it decided that its algorithms and visualization software matched needs within the intelligence community, Recorded Future entered the cyber threat intelligence market in January 2012.

In 2014, the company launched Recorded Future Dark Web, integrating open and dark web sourcing as well as dark web forum access and analysis.

In 2016, Recorded Future was named a partner for threat intelligence by Splunk, Palo Alto Networks, and Vencore GEOINT.

In May 2017, Recorded Future introduced Insikt Group, the company's threat intelligence research arm. The word "insikt" is Swedish, a nod to Recorded Future's co-founders, and means "insight." Insikt Group is responsible for delivering analyst-generated assessments, insights, and recommended actions to customers and the public.

In May 2019, New York-based private equity firm Insight Partners acquired Recorded Future for $780 million.

In November 2019, the company opened a second office in Somerville with the goal of building a "campus" in the Davis Square area. Recorded Future currently employs more than 430 people around the world.

The company specializes in the collection, processing, analysis, and dissemination of threat intelligence. Recorded Future uses machine learning and natural language processing methods to continuously collect and organize data from open web, dark web, and technical sources. The resulting information is displayed within a software-as-a-service portal.

Recorded Future's product is called the Recorded Future Intelligence Cloud.

Using what they call a "Temporal Analytics Engine," Recorded Future provides forecasting and analysis tools to help analysts predict future events by scanning sources on the internet, and extracting, measuring, and visualizing the information to show networks and patterns in the past, present, and future. As of 2015, the engine was described as "Web Intelligence Engine." Likewise, in an article in the Washington Post authored by former General Counsel of the National Security Agency Stewart Baker, described the company as a predictive analytics web intelligence firm but deleted the term upon request of Recorded Future. The software analyzes sources and forms "invisible links" between documents to find links that tie them together and may possibly indicate the entities and events involved.

Clients initially included the financial sector with quantitative investors, with the company transitioning in 2013 to providing cyber security solutions, to companies such as SITA.

Controversies

In April 2015, a coding website accused Recorded Future of violating internet privacy by analyzing private Facebook messages, which it denied. The accusation was disproven when the assumed private link for private Facebook chat was found posted publicly online via a server log.