Changing a company name is not a decision taken lightly. But we've built a lot of excitement around our product Grok, so changing the name underscores our transition from a research venture to a rapidly growing commercial product company. We also feel that it better reflects our mission to help companies automatically and intelligently act on their data.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, here’s the trivia part: Merriam-Webster defines Grok as a verb meaning "to understand thoroughly and intuitively." Robert Heinlein coined the term in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land. It seemed the perfect fit for a technology that can learn and adapt to changing patterns automatically. Heinlein described the term as a Martian word that meant "to drink," which evokes imagery of Grok thirstily ingesting fast data streams. The icon next to the name, affectionately known in our marketing department as "the Bug," actually represents waves of data flowing into Grok.

Intelligent, intuitive, adaptive…these are all qualities of our product Grok, but also qualities we aspire to as a company. We look forward to breaking new ground and building a history with this new company name, and hope that you can be a part of it. Stay tuned!

-Rami

   By Rami Branitzky