LTU Technologies confirms its ambitions to dominate the "image mining" market worldwide
PARIS and WASHINGTON and NEW YORK and TOKYO, April 19 -- JASTEC Co., Ltd. (TSE: 9717 - News), a leading Japanese custom software development and systems integration company, announced on March 28, 2005 that its 100% U.S. subsidiary, JASTEC International Inc., had acquired 100% of the stocks of LTU Technologies, the leading image mining software platform (http://www.LTUtech.com). LTU Technologies is the world's most deployed visual search engine software. LTU Technologies will continue to operate as an independent company, with the management team, vertical markets and product development roadmap unchanged.
"LTU Technologies is an impressive company, one of the very few developing a breakthrough technology while maintaining a sustainable business. We are excited about providing LTU Technologies with major resources to grow its product line and customer base, so that they can go on dominating the promising market that they are operating in" said Noboru Nakatani, President & CEO of JASTEC International Inc. "This acquisition is in line with JASTEC's vision of expanding its presence globally, by acquiring an innovative pre- packaged software company operating both in Europe and the US. "
LTU Technologies is established as the standard software for content-based search, retrieval and classification of images and videos -- a technology referred to as "Image Mining". LTU Technologies addresses several vertical markets, including Law Enforcement, Intelligence, Intellectual Property, Corporate search, and online search and filtering. Since its inception in 1999, LTU Technologies has won a number of prestigious awards including by the Wall Street Journal, Technology Review and the Red Herring. Venture Capital firms Mars Capital and Galileo Partners have supported LTU since the launch of the company.
"LTU Technologies succeeded in the first stage of its development: bringing a promising technology to the market, proving value and ROI, and growing a solid reputation within our customers and partners. We want to continue this quest to bring our exciting capabilities into the mainstream," said Chahab Nastar, CEO of LTU Technologies. "By joining forces with JASTEC, we will be able to accelerate our growth tremendously. We are eager to take advantage of JASTEC's support to expand and improve the software that we deliver to our customers." Nastar remains CEO of LTU Technologies, while Nakatani steps up as the new Chairman of the Board.
The acquisition brings together complementary assets as well as complementary continents. By being backed by a solid technology group such as JASTEC, LTU Technologies is confirming its ambitions, not only in its current vertical markets, but also in future markets in which its versatile technology will be relevant. LTU Technologies will address a wider geographical market as well: Europe, North America & Asia/Pacific.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
About LTU Technologies
Founded in 1999 by veteran scientists of MIT, Oxford and INRIA, LTU Technologies ("LTU") provides mission-critical software for search, retrieval and classification of images and videos. LTU's technology is patented worldwide. LTU's customers include the US Customs, the FBI, the French Police, the Italian Police and the French Patent Office as well as the PPR group, the Meredith Corporation, Cyveillance and BizRate.com. LTU's software has also successfully been integrated in third party solutions for brand protection, enterprise search, digital asset management, and email monitoring. LTU Technologies is headquartered in Paris, France with a US office in Washington DC. For more information, visit http://www.ltutech.com .
About JASTEC Co., Ltd.
JASTEC Co., Ltd. ("JASTEC") was founded in Tokyo, Japan in 1971 by a young entrepreneurial systems engineer named Shigeru Kamiyama and his colleagues. Their mission was to create a company that would offer services and solutions to remedy the needs of the chaotic software industry in Japan. Since that time, JASTEC has grown into Japan's leading place to go for custom application development. JASTEC has been listed on the 1st section of the Tokyo stock exchange since May 1, 2003, and leads the Japanese application development industry in terms of capital, total sales and profitability. Specializing in custom software development and systems integration, JASTEC has a wide range of software products and leading-edge software development expertise, employing only the best and most sought after software engineers. JASTEC achieved CMMI level-5 for the entire organization in 2003.
