about – Spinque

Our story

Once upon a time a group of brave researchers at the Centrum Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI) operated between the lines. At one front the state-of-the-art in "high-performance database engines" (how to do things fast), and at the other the experimentalists in "information retrieval" (how to determine what is relevant). As true pioneers the researchers were melting the two fronts together bit-by-bit. Integrating IR and DB from the ground up a completely new world for information access dawned upon them. But the road to success was bumpy and dangerous. It was only after several PhDs that a revolutionary new approach for search engine design emerged. A search system so flexible that it could model relevance for any problem while achieving the performance of a high-end database system. Convinced of their own success they prepared to take on the world. From their small cubicle at CWI in Amsterdam the first projects were tackled.

Seven years later Spinque operates from their office in the old factory-warehouse Hooghiemstra in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The research idea has grown out to an industrial strength software product. Today the flexibility of Spinque enables information specialists to model the search solutions to their problems, and at the same time power the search engines that answer millions of queries per day. Staying closely connected to the science community is important to us, and part of the fun. Solving your problems is our dedication.

Based in Utrecht, The Netherlands, Spinque started as a technology spin-off of Centrum voor Wiskunde & Informatica, CWI (the Dutch National Research Centre in Computer Science and Mathematics). Spinque develops search technology for information specialists, combining the key advantages of information retrieval and databases to easily provide customised access to any data source. This approach is being successfully applied to a growing number of scenarios, including linked open data, intellectual property, multimedia archives, medical archives, user-specific domains (e.g. search applications for children).

Spinque profile