Keyhole

Keyhole, Inc., founded in 2001, was a pioneering software development company specializing in geospatial data visualization applications and was acquired by Google in 2004 for $35 million. Initially launched as a spin-off of Intrinsic Graphics, first round funding came from a Sony venture capital fund and others, additional capital came from an NVIDIA bundling deal, from the CIA's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, with the majority of In-Q-Tel' funds coming from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and from angel investor Brian McClendon (who later came on as a board member and VP). Keyhole's marquee application suite, Earth Viewer, emerged as the highly successful Google Earth application in 2005; other aspects of core technology survive in Google Maps, Google Mobile and the Keyhole Markup Language. (From Wikipedia)