1. Splunk : Started in 2003 by co-founders Michael Baum, Rob Das and Erik Swan, Splunk went public in 2012 with a valuation at 28x revenue ($3.2 billion). Splunk´s primary activity is  analyzing huge amounts of customer and transaction data using its software.  At the core of its software, Splunk has a machine data engine, which has capabilities to collect, index, search and manage data. Splunk´s software can collect and index terabytes of information daily, irrespective of format or source. The current market cap of Splunk is 10.04 $B. Year to date Splunk´s stock price has soared over 25%. 

2.  Tableau :  Tableau was founded at Stanford University´s computer science department between 1997 and 2002.  Prof. Pat Hanrahan and PhD student Chris Stolte are key people who were initially involved on this project.Essentially a Big Data analytics company, Tableau today services  various Fortune 500 companies, SMEs,  government agencies, universities and research institutions .Tableau´s products are used by organisations  to  increase sales, streamline operations, improve customer service, manage investments, assess quality , complete academic research and address environmental problems. Tableau went for an IPO in May 2013.  Tableau´s share was priced $ 39 during the IPO. Currently Tableau´s share price has climbed more than 170% and is priced at $95 with a market cap of 5.65$B.

3. Rocket Fuel : Rocket Fuel successfully completed its initial public offering in September 2013. Rocket Fuel is a provider of a programmatic media-buying platform. It utilizes artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and predictive modeling to autonomously real-time bid (RTB) on digital media ad impressions across web, video, mobile, and social media.  The company has three founders : George John, Richard Frankel and Abhinav Gupta. During IPO Rocket Fuel´s share price was $29 per share. Currently the share price has climbed over 85% to approx $55 per share. The market cap of Rocket Fuel is 1.20 $B.

Image credit : Mathew Knott