CARY, N.C. – Saffron Technology will soon call Silicon Valley home.

The Cary-based company announced on Thursday that it’s packing up and moving out west.

The company, which says it recently raised $7 million series B funding, has earmarked the cash to accelerate business growth which include opening new global headquarters in Silicon Valley.

Just over a year ago, executive chairman Gayle Sheppard took over as CEO of privately-held analytics firm. She was able to secure $5 million in new capital earlier this month from two investors, the company disclosed in a securities filing on March 5. According to that filing, they already were seeking the additional $2 million.

“Data becomes infinitely more powerful when you tie together its meaning from a multiplicity of disparate sources. Our patented Natural Intelligence Platform unifies all kinds of data – structured and unstructured – in real time, from a large variety of sources and continuously learns about the things in the data without the need for pre-determined rules or models,” said Sheppard, in a prepared statement released publicly on Thursday afternoon.

“Now you can automatically see converging and other patterns to anticipate outcomes and prepare to act,” the statement continued. “These capabilities, combined with our customers’ success with Saffron, position us well for growth. With this additional funding, we will expand customer-centric next generation service teams, build a strong brand presence, create scalability across our business, and establish a Silicon Valley headquarters in spring 2014.”

In 2012, Saffron’s data mining enabled it to secure a patent for technology it claims can help predict future events. The patent covers a means of turning so-called “big data” – massive amounts of information gathered from a wide variety of not necessarily related sources – to forecast what might happen.

The patent is titled: “Event-Based Anticipation Systems, Methods and Computer Program Products for Associative Memories Wherein Times of Future Events Occurring Are Predicted.”

Saffron launched in 1999.