Spinque
Spinque B.V. is a Dutch search technology firm offering Spinque Desk, a visual low-code tool for building knowledge-graph-driven search applications used by cultural-heritage institutions, municipalities, universities, healthcare platforms, e-commerce operators, and enterprise customers.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2010
- HeadquartersUtrecht, Netherlands
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Spinque does
Spinque B.V. is a Dutch search technology company founded in 2010 at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam by Arjen de Vries, Roberto Cornacchia, and Wouter Alink, now headquartered in Utrecht. The firm builds Spinque Desk, a visual low-code design tool that lets domain experts compose building-block operations on knowledge graphs to produce customised search applications, without writing code. The platform is underpinned by SpinQL, a proprietary probabilistic relational algebra that compiles to SQL executed on the MonetDB columnar database and is positioned by Spinque as the first commercially deployed scalable probabilistic graph database. Spinque integrates heterogeneous data sources (RDF, SKOS, ERP and CRM feeds) into unified knowledge graphs and enriches them with external authorities such as Wikidata; a BERT-based entity-extraction block sits alongside BM25 retrieval and fuzzy-matching primitives inside the strategy builder.
The product portfolio layers domain-specific sub-brands on top of Spinque Desk: SPARQUE (e-commerce search and recommendation), Raadzaam (municipal council search), EQUIP (university research intelligence), and CultuurLINK (a free vocabulary-alignment service for cultural-heritage institutions). Spinque also runs Spinque Academy, a six-week training programme, and offers Design Sprint and Develop Sprint professional services. Named deployments include Rijksmuseum, Sound and Vision, the Dutch Network War Collections (which connects 450+ organisations), the City of Utrecht, the Municipality of Almere, Bouwmaat, Kanker.nl, TU Delft, and Mercedes-Benz Operations. The firm monetises via subscription to Spinque Desk, multi-year enterprise contracts, and project-based professional services, distributing through direct enterprise sales and channel partners including SPARQUE and Raadzaam. The team consists of approximately 20-25 staff across data science, development, ML, UX, and general management, and the company has no external funding rounds disclosed.
Spinque firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Spinque
- Legal name
- Spinque B.V.
- Website
- https://spinque.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2010
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Spinque B.V. is a Dutch search technology firm offering Spinque Desk, a visual low-code tool for building knowledge-graph-driven search applications used by cultural-heritage institutions, municipalities, universities, healthcare platforms, e-commerce operators, and enterprise customers.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Spinque industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Enterprise Search Software
- NAICS
- Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services (54169)
- SIC
- Services-Computer Programming Services (7371)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Records & Information Management (RIM) / Records Management (HDAEAGAC)
Keywords
Where Spinque is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Utrecht
- HQ country
- Netherlands
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices1 record
Markets served
Spinque business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations
Revenue model
- Software Platform Subscription: Spinque Desk is offered as a platform/subscription model where organizations use the design tool to build and deploy search applications.
- Professional Services: Design Sprints, Develop Sprints, and Spinque Academy training programs help organizations design and implement search solutions.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Multi-year contract | Contact Sales |
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels3 records
Marketing channels5 records
Spinque product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Spinque builds and sells Spinque Desk, a visual no-code search design platform that enables domain experts to integrate heterogeneous data sources into unified knowledge graphs and deploy custom search applications as Web APIs. The company pairs the platform with professional services (Design Sprints, Develop Sprints, Academy training) and offers vertical solutions such as EQUIP for universities, Raadzaam for municipal councils, SPARQUE for e-commerce, and CultuurLINK for cultural heritage vocabulary alignment.
Product overview
Spinque is a search technology company offering a platform built around Spinque Desk as the core design tool, supplemented by domain-specific search applications and professional services. The portfolio includes SPARQUE (e-commerce search and recommendation), Raadzaam (government council search), and EQUIP (university research search) as vertical solutions, all powered by the Spinque Desk platform. Spinque Services provides design sprints, development sprints, and Spinque Academy training. CultuurLINK offers vocabulary alignment for cultural heritage institutions. The architecture enables users to build tailored search applications using visual building blocks without coding, connecting heterogeneous data sources into knowledge graphs and deploying as APIs.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- EQUIP: Data driven search application tailored for universities and research institutes. EQUIP helps manage external relations, identify angles for research funds or partnerships, and prepare strategic meetings.
- Raadzaam
- Spinque Desk
Products and services
- Spinque Desk Visual no-code design tool that enables domain experts to integrate heterogeneous data sources into unified knowledge graphs, design search strategies using building blocks, and deploy search solutions as Web APIs.
- EQUIP Data-driven search application designed for universities and research institutes. Helps manage external relations, identify angles for research funds and partnerships, and prepare strategic meetings by integrating ERP, CRM, and publication databases.
- Raadzaam Search engine tailored for members of local government councils. Provides unified access to council documents, proposals, motions, letters, and commitments to help councillors prepare for political debates.
- SPARQUE Customizable search and recommendation engine for e-commerce, powered by Spinque Desk. Provides personalized online shopping experiences with search, cross-sell, and up-sell capabilities for online retailers.
- CultuurLINK Free online vocabulary alignment service for cultural heritage institutions. Links internal vocabularies to large heritage thesauri such as GTAA, enabling cross-collection search and integration.
- Spinque Academy Structured 6-week training program that teaches users to build their own search applications with Spinque Desk, covering knowledge graphs, search strategies, API deployment, data virtualization, and search design methodology.
Quantifiable outcome
- Spinque technology answers millions of queries daily across eCommerce, government, enterprise search, and cultural heritage domains.
- +3 more outcomes
Companies that use Spinque
Customer profileNamed customers10 records
Segments5 records
Ideal customer profiles5 records
Spinque technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration5 records
AI capability8 records
Feature5 records
Spinque partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Five partnerships are on record, tiered minor and core.
- COMSODE Project ConsortiumminorSpinque was consortium member of COMSODE project (2013-2015), funded by EU Seventh Framework Programme. Project focused on turning governmental datasets into Linked Open Data.
- SPARQUEcoreSPARQUE is a trusted partner for e-commerce search and recommendation. Powered by Spinque Desk, SPARQUE has taken a frontier position in search and recommendation in eCommerce. They offer a customizable search and recommendation engine for e-commerce.
- RaadzaamcoreRaadzaam is a search engine for city councilors, offered to municipalities under the Spinque brand. Launched on raadvanalmere.nl, it helps municipal councillors efficiently prepare for political debates.
- Mercedes-Benz OperationsminorSpinque created a digital twin of vehicle production process for Mercedes-Benz Operations. Presented at Startup Autobahn EXPO2022 in Stuttgart, Germany.
- MonetDB SolutionscoreSpinque's search strategies compile to SQL executed on MonetDB columnar database. Significant R&D investment in optimizing performance on MonetDB, achieving millisecond query response over billions of triples.
Scale indicators7 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights7 records
Spinque competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Algolia: Algolia provides hosted search APIs and relevance tooling for e-commerce and enterprise. It is a direct peer because Spinque (via its SPARQUE partner) competes for the same e-commerce and enterprise search workloads with similar API-based deployment and personalization capabilities.
- Elastic: Elastic offers the Elasticsearch platform for enterprise search, observability, and analytics. It is a direct peer because Spinque Desk competes for enterprise search and knowledge management workloads where customers choose between visual-design graph search (Spinque) and Elastic's inverted-index + vector search stack.
- Coveo: Coveo provides AI-driven enterprise search and relevance platforms with a focus on customer service, commerce, and workplace use cases. It is a direct peer because both target enterprise and vertical SaaS buyers with relevance-tuning, personalization, and knowledge-graph-adjacent features.
- Sinequa: Sinequa offers an enterprise search platform built on a neural and semantic search architecture with knowledge graph integration. It is a direct peer because Sinequa and Spinque both emphasize knowledge-graph-driven, AI-augmented enterprise search for large regulated organizations.
- PoolParty Semantic Solutions: PoolParty provides a semantic middleware platform for knowledge graph, taxonomy, and ontology management used in enterprise search. It is a direct peer because Spinque's knowledge graph and SKOS vocabulary alignment (CultuurLINK) overlaps with PoolParty's core taxonomy/thesaurus tooling.
- Ontotext: Ontotext provides GraphDB and semantic graph database technology for enterprise knowledge management and search. It is a direct peer because Spinque's probabilistic graph database and RDF/linked-data capabilities overlap with Ontotext's semantic search and knowledge graph offerings.
- Constructor.io: Constructor.io provides AI-powered search and product discovery for e-commerce. It is a direct peer because Spinque's SPARQUE-powered e-commerce search competes for the same online retailer customers with personalized search and recommendation capabilities.
Broad incumbents
- Microsoft (Azure Cognitive Search): Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search (and SharePoint/Microsoft Search) provides enterprise search as part of a much larger cloud and productivity platform. It is a broad incumbent because it overlaps with Spinque's enterprise and government search workloads but competes as part of a full cloud suite rather than a specialized search product.
- Google Cloud Search / Vertex AI Search: Google's Vertex AI Search and Cloud Search provide enterprise and AI-powered search capabilities integrated with Google's cloud platform. It is a broad incumbent because it offers enterprise search that competes for many of the same customers Spinque targets but at much larger scale and with bundled AI/LLM features.
Emerging players
- Expert.ai: Expert.ai provides natural language understanding and semantic search technology for enterprise content. It is an emerging peer because it overlaps with Spinque's BERT-based entity extraction and semantic search capabilities, particularly for document-heavy enterprise use cases, but is at a different scale and go-to-market stage.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat3 records
Key risks1 record
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Spinque social profiles
Digital presenceSpinque compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance1 record
Spinque financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Spinque leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles6 records
Spinque funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Spinque M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Spinque
What does Spinque do?
Spinque builds and sells Spinque Desk, a visual no-code search design platform that enables domain experts to integrate heterogeneous data sources into unified knowledge graphs and deploy custom search applications as Web APIs. The company pairs the platform with professional services (Design Sprints, Develop Sprints, Academy training) and offers vertical solutions such as EQUIP for universities, Raadzaam for municipal councils, SPARQUE for e-commerce, and CultuurLINK for cultural heritage vocabulary alignment.
Is Spinque a public or private company?
Spinque is a private company. It is classified as founder individual operated bootstrapped and is currently operating.
When was Spinque founded?
Spinque was founded in 2010. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Spinque based?
Spinque is headquartered in Utrecht, Netherlands, in the Europe region.
How does Spinque make money?
Two revenue lines are on record. Software Platform Subscription is the primary driver. The others are professional Services.
Who are Spinque's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Algolia, Elastic, Coveo, Sinequa, PoolParty Semantic Solutions, Ontotext and Constructor.io. Broad incumbents are Microsoft (Azure Cognitive Search) and Google Cloud Search / Vertex AI Search. Expert.ai is listed as an emerging player.
Does Spinque have an API?
Yes. Spinque Desk provides API endpoints for search functionality. Search strategies can be deployed as Web APIs, enabling developers to connect search functionality to their applications. The API powers frontend search applications, supports multiple entry points for different search needs, and enables autocompletion, full text search, filtering, and ranking capabilities. Strategies are published as REST API endpoints through the Spinque Desk management interface.
What industry is Spinque in?
Spinque's product category is Enterprise Search Software. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDAEAGAC, Records & Information Management (RIM) / Records Management. Its NAICS code is 54169 and its SIC code is 7371.