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Factual Inc.
Factual launched in 2008 with Gil Elbaz, the applied-math architect behind Google's original AdSense targeting, defining the premise: a clean,...
Factual Inc.
Factual launched in 2008 with Gil Elbaz, the applied-math architect behind Google's original AdSense targeting, defining the premise: a clean, probabilistic dataset containing verified attributes for every place on earth. The founding philosophy wasn't a database company — it was an indexing project for the physical world, comparable to what Google did for web pages. Investors were deliberately limited; early backers included Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and data-centric funds, but Factual never raised at the frantic cadence of a consumer startup. The long-game architecture reflected Elbaz's prior Applied Semantics exit to Google in 2003 (per TechCrunch, 2014). Factual's core product was a location graph — billions of data points resolving addresses, points of interest, and commercial entities into structured, queryable truth. Its engine ingested and disambiguated data from public records, sensor networks, and commercial feeds, then layered entity-resolution algorithms to detect that "Joe's Pizza at 7 Carmine St" and a Yelp entry for "Joe's of Greenwich Village" were the same restaurant. Customers spanned mapping, ad-tech, and enterprise analytics: Apple used Factual's Places dataset to improve Apple Maps (per TechCrunch, 2015), Uber relied on it for pickup-point placement and ETA calculations (per The Information, 2016), and Facebook ingested it to power location-based advertising. The footprint was global, with data coverage for over 100 million places across 50 countries. Factual operated a lean, engineering-heavy team across its Los Angeles headquarters and satellite engineering hubs in New York and Seattle. Elbaz maintained tight control over data-hygiene standards — every coordinate tagged with a confidence score — and the organizational culture was academic-computational rather than sales-driven, which meant the firm's reputation among data scientists outstripped its public brand. In April 2020, Factual announced a definitive agreement to sell its assets to Foursquare, merging its location technology with Foursquare's venue-and-mobility graph (per the firm's official communications, 2020). The deal closed that same year, creating a combined entity positioning itself as the largest independent location-technology platform in the United States. Factual's structural differentiator was never its go-to-market; it was Elbaz's data provenance thesis — the bet that enterprises would pay for a neutral, third-party index of physical-world data maintained without platform bias. Unlike first-party datasets inside Google or Apple, Factual didn't operate a consumer app whose data-sharing incentives might conflict with enterprise clients. That neutrality made it the reference layer for firms building competing maps and autonomous-vehicle stacks — a real but quiet moat that the Foursquare acquisition ultimately consolidated into a single, scaled data asset.
General information
Firm type
other
Year founded
2008
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
Los Angeles
Corporate office
Los Angeles, CA, United States
Additional offices
Beverly Hills, CA · New York, NY · Seattle, WA
Principals
Gil Elbaz
Founder
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
What was Factual's core business?
Factual built and maintained a global location graph — a structured, machine-readable dataset of over 100 million places with verified attributes like coordinates, addresses, and business categories. The firm sold access to this clean, entity-resolved data under commercial licenses, serving as a neutral reference layer for enterprises building maps, advertising products, and logistics systems. Gil Elbaz characterized Factual as a data-infrastructure company, not a consumer-software business.
Who founded Factual and what is his background?
Gil Elbaz founded Factual in 2008. He is an engineer and applied-math specialist who previously co-founded Applied Semantics, a contextual-targeting startup that Google acquired in 2003. That technology became the algorithmic foundation for Google AdSense, making Elbaz one of the earliest architects of programmatic advertising. He leveraged his own conviction and subsequent wealth to operate Factual on a deliberately slow-burn capital model.
Which large technology companies used Factual's data?
Factual's disclosed customers included Apple, Facebook, and Uber. Apple licensed the Factual Places dataset to improve Apple Maps after its rocky 2012 launch (per TechCrunch, 2015). Uber used Factual's location signals for rider pickup positioning and estimated arrival times (per The Information, 2016). Facebook ingested the data to power location-based advertising products across its platform.
What happened to Factual — does it still operate independently?
No. In April 2020, Factual announced it was selling its key assets to Foursquare, the location-technology and consumer-venue platform (per the firm's official communications, 2020). The transaction combined Foursquare's pilgrimage data, generated from millions of consumer check-ins, with Factual's machine-resolved global places graph. The merged entity continued operating under the Foursquare brand as one of the largest independent location-data platforms.
How was Factual funded compared to typical venture-backed startups?
Factual raised venture capital from top-tier firms including Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures, but Elbaz deliberately avoided the hyper-scale fundraising cycles common among consumer and enterprise startups of the same era. The company's capital strategy reflected Elbaz's own wealth and his conviction that a long-horizon, engineering-first data business should not be forced into rapid sales-revenue milestones. This gave Factual the runway to refine its entity-resolution algorithms over a full decade before the Foursquare transaction.
What made Factual's dataset structurally different from Google's or Apple's own location data?
Factual was a neutral third party — it did not operate a consumer app whose data could be gated behind privacy walls or monetized in ways that conflicted with enterprise buyers. This made it a reference layer for companies building competing maps, navigation systems, and autonomous-vehicle stacks. Its entity-resolution emphasis also meant it unified what first-party data-sets often left siloed — a restaurant, for instance, might exist in Google's catalog and Yelp's database under slightly different names; Factual's probabilistic engine resolved those to a single canonical record.
Is Factual still a going concern under Gil Elbaz?
No, the Factual brand and location-data assets were absorbed by Foursquare in 2020. Gil Elbaz has subsequently turned his attention to his non-profit initiative, the Carbon Removal Project, and to TenOneTen Ventures, an early-stage technology fund he co-founded. He is not actively operating a firm called Factual Inc. at the time of Altss's most recent research.
Profile maintained by Altss using OSINT (open-source intelligence), regulatory filings, licensed data partners, and verified direct submissions. Read the methodology. Last updated: . Continuous refresh with full update cycles at least every 30 days.
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