When it comes to this years big data funding stories, the first thing that probably comes to your mind is Intel’s $740 million investment in Cloudera, or MapR’s $110 million financing round led by Google Capital. You’ll also probably recall funding rounds of companies like Hotonworks, MongoDB, and DataStax too. But aside from these popular Hadoop and database vendors, there has been a lot of interesting funding activity in the big data space.
Take Alteryx, for example, who raised a whopping $60 million in funding last month; or ContextRelevant who went and raised $28 million in just 28 months. Undoubtedly, 2013 was an extremely busy year when it came VC activity in the big data space. This year, however, has been equally exciting!
Below are 7 significant funding stories you may have missed so far this year:
1) InsideSales.com Raises $100M to Predict Sales
InsideSales.com, a company specialising in could-based sales acceleration technology, announced in April this year that it has raised $100 million in series C funding. Polaris Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led the funding round, with participation from Salesforce, Acadia Woods, EPIC Ventures, Hummer Winbald, U.S. Venture Partners and Zetta Venture Partners.
InsideSales.com provides software-as-a-service (SaaS) to more than 1,000 customers, including large enterprises like Microsoft, Fidelity, Groupon and Marketo. The company sits in between marketing automation services like Eloqua and Marketo and CRM vendors like Salesforce and Microsoft. The aim of InsideSales.com is to use resources from both of these fields to help sales teams become more effective in their operations.
2) Kreditech Raises $40 Million at $190 Million Valuation
The big data finance company Kreditech secured $40 million Series B investment from new and existing global investors in June. It was the largest funding round ever for a German financial services technology company and one of the largest rounds in Germany in 2014. The lead investor is Värde Partners, a global investment manager with fund assets in excess of 8.5 billion USD. Co-lead investor is existing shareholder Blumberg Capital. Other shareholders, including Point Nine Capital, also participated in the round.
Based on automated big data and machine learning credit scoring, Kreditech extends loans to individual customers across the globe in real-time using a fully automated credit scoring system and banking backend infrastructure. The company operates independently from credit bureaus and traditional banking infrastructure. In just 20 months, Kreditech has scored more than 1.5 million individual loans – using a current average of 15,000 data points per application.
3) Big Data Ecommerce Outfit Qubit Scoops Up $26m in Series B
E-commerce analytics startup Qubit secured $26 million in Series B funding in late September, with Accel Partners leading the round. Original investors Salesforce Ventures and Balderton Capital, also participated.
Qubit specialises in tools which assist online retailers to monitor and optimize sales through A/B testing and user centric personalization of content. TechCrunch reports that, with approximately 150 customers in the U.K. and the U.S., including Hilton Hotel, Jimmy Choo, Staples, Farfetch, Topshop and Uniqlo, the company revealed a 260% year on year growth in sales in the six months to June 2014.
4) Sumo Logic Plan to Globalise, Following $30 Million Funding Round
Sumo Logic, whose software manages and analyses IT log files, raised $30 million in its latest round of funding (May this year), bringing their total funding to $80.5 million. The funding round was led by Sequoia Capital, with exisiting investors Greylock Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Accel Partners also participating.
Sumo Logic is a cloud-based software solution which mangages system log files to give companies a greater insight into the functioning of their IT systems. The software offers an insight across a company’s IT infrastructure, including the company’s apps, servers and network. Sumo Logic also uses machine learning in its LogReduce feature to sort log file data into patterns, meaning anomalies and errors and can be identified before the become major issues.
5) GoodData’s BI Platform Rakes in $25.7M in Series E Funding
GoodData, a Cloud based Business Intelligence startup, landed $25.7 million in Series E funding just last month, led by Intel Capital and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Tenaya Capital, TOTVS, Next World Capital, Windcrest, and Pharus Capital. The total funding received so far has now gone up to $101.2 million.
According to Ben Kepes, contributor at Forbes, their analytics platform “allows companies to manage, analyze and visualize all from one environment. He adds that “this approach really democratizes data, allowing managers and business people to generate their own insights rather than having to wait for IT departments and data scientists to run queries for them”
6) SiSense Gains Momentum with $30m Series C Funding
SiSense, a business intelligence startup based in Tel Aviv, announced in June that it had raised $30 million in Series C funding. The round was led by DFJ Growth and included participation from existing backers Battery Ventures, Genesis Partners and Opus Capital.
The company’s software is designed to make big data analytics easier for ordinary, non-technical business users. Workers can combine data from multiple sources for analysis, create visualisations and web-based dashboards, and gain insights through both mobile and desktop devices.
Among the 500 customers of SiSense are eBay, Target, Samsung Electronics and ESPN. The company said that the money from the funding round would be used to grow its workforce, expand into new markets and build its customer base.
7) Marketing Intelligence Startup Radius Picks Up $54.7M in a Bid to Change Conventional Marketing
It was announced in September that Radius, a marketing intelligence platform, secured $54.7 million in series C funding. The funding came from companies and individuals such as Founders Fund, Glynn Capital Management, John Mack formerly of Morgan Stanley, Charles Songhurst formerly of Microsoft, and actor and entrepreneur Jared Leto.
Radius provides sales and marketing teams with access to accurate, updated business information on 30+ million small-and-medium-sized businesses, with a team of more than 50, working out of San Francisco. The new funding will be used to expand its data science initiatives with intentions to remodel market and customer engagement strategies used by companies.
(Image Credit: FamZoo Staff)
