The "Paradise Papers" were analyzed using Swedish tech company Neo4j’s technology.

Previously, Neo4j worked on the Panama Papers - “a lightning strike” that proved the power of the company's technology, said co-founder Emil Eifrém.

The company counts NASA, Ebay and Accenture among its customers.

Neo4j has unwittingly become a major player in database-driven journalism.



In 2015, when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) were about to analyze the Panama Papers, they assigned Swedish graph technology company Neo4j to help interpret and understand all the data contained in the leak’s 11,5 million documents.

The latest installment — which follows the Panama Papers —has been dubbed the "Paradise Papers" and consists more than 13 million documents, obtained mostly from law firm Appleby, a leading adviser on offshore affairs.

For the analysis of the "Paradise Papers" documents, Neo4j has been at it again.

“For us the work has been incredibly similar to the one we did for ICIJ with the Panama Papers. We don’t own the data, we only help to process it,” says Emil Eifrém, Neo4j CEO and cofounder, to Swedish tech site Di Digital.

Connecting the dots

Neo4j’s technology helps bring big datasets alive by establishing connections between the different data points.

This means that a company can make quicker and more sophisticated queries on its data, and apply it to real-world business uses cases, which range “from helping NASA get to Mars faster to helping Ebay transform its customer shopping experience,” Eifrém tells Business Insider Nordic, referring to some of the company’s biggest customers.

“There is a tremendous amount of business value in understanding the connections in your data. That's what Google has done, that's what Facebook has done, that's what LinkedIn has done - and as every company becomes a technology company, we’re helping all companies do the same.”

The more surprising application for Eifrém himself, is the journalistic one: The Panama Papers shook the global elite for its revelations last year – and ultimately earned the ICIJ a Pulitzer Prize.

“The impact from Panama Papers served as a 'lightning strike', providing a broad, global example of the power of Neo4j and the importance of understanding connections within datasets,” Eifrém says.

As to the burning hot subject of the "Paradise Papers", Neo4j’s analyses of the leaks' 120 000 individuals and companies have already come with many big revelations, including how Russian billionaire and Jared Kushner associate Yuri Milner had helped several Russian state-owned companies invest in both Twitter and Facebook.

With the Paradise and Panama leaks, Neo4j’s tech has become a potent force in database-driven journalism. Its software is now in active use by database journalists in media houses like BBC, The Guardian and The New York Times - “a complete surprise to Eifrém”.

The company has also started offering a free education aimed at database journalists.

Neo4j - Graph database tech provider

Industry: Enterprise Software, Big Data

Founded: 2007

Founded by: Emil Eifrém, Johan Svensson

Headquarters: San Mateo, California

Funding: $80, 1 million (through series D)

Major Investors: Fidelity Growth Partners Europe, Sunstone Capital and Conor Venture Partners

Big customers: LinkedIn, Walmart, NASA, Ebay, Cisco, Accenture

Industries: Today 12 out of 25 largest financial services firms, 7 out of top 10 retailers and 8 out of top 10 software vendors use Neo4j. In addition, over 500 startups across the world use Neo4j as the foundation of their business.