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Funding
Neo4j Announces $325 Million Series F Investment, the Largest in Database History
On June 17, Neo4J announced a $325M Series F funding round. Eurazeo led the round, with participation from existing investors Creandum, Greenbridge Partners, and One Peak, as well as new participants DCTP, GV, and Lightrock. Neo4J plans to use this money along three key vectors: buffing up their multi-cloud service offerings, growing capabilities to support enhanced machine learning models in graph-based data science, and expanding their market reach. Amalgam Insights’ Hyoun Park assesses the Neo4J funding more thoroughly, and highlights the importance of graph databases as the next step in enterprise analytics, and the key role they will have in supporting the next generation of machine learning models.
Introducing Transform: a ‘metrics store’ to make data accessible
Transform, a centralized metrics store, has come out of stealth, announcing $24.5M in funding across two rounds. Index Ventures and Redpoint Ventures led the round, with participation from Fathom Capital and Work Life Ventures. Transform is looking to double their headcount with this funding. General availability of Transform is projected for Fall 2021.
Crate.io Secures $10 Million in Funding
Crate.io, the developers of the CrateDB database platform, raised $10M in additional funding, bringing their total funding up to $31M. Draper Esprit and Vito Ventures participated in this round. The funding will be used to expand sales, grow functionality and add more partner integrations, and promote the open source developer community around CrateDB.
Product Launches and Updates
Cloud-native Altair® SmartWorks™ Empowers Enterprises to Make Data-driven Decisions
On June 14, Altair debuted Altair SmartWorks, a cloud-native analytics platform. SmartWorks integrates the data prep capabilities of Altair Monarch and their machine learning and predictive analytics solution Knowledge Studio under one roof, providing access to analytics, machine learning, and IoT no matter one’s comfort level with coding. SmartWorks is available now via Altair Units, their subscription-based licensing model.
Dataiku Announces Fully Managed, Online Analytics Offering
On June 14, Dataiku launched Dataiku Online, providing cloud-based access to their machine learning platform for smaller organizations without the extensive IT departments of their larger counterparts. In particular, seed-stage companies and other young startups are eligible for highly discounted pricing. A 14-day free trial is available now. Via Dataiku Online, customers can access data storage tools from Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, and Snowflake, and Snowflake customers can likewise access Dataiku Online through the Snowflake Marketplace.
DataRobot 7.1 Introduces Enhancements to Take AI Projects to the Next Level
On June 15, DataRobot announced its 7.1 platform release. Key new features include MLOps Management Agents, which manage remote machine learning models’ lifecycles; the no-code AI App Builder to turn deployed models into AI-based apps without needing customers to write code; and the feature discovery integration with Snowflake, announced last week at Snowflake Summit. The 7.1 release is available now.
Hiring
SAS Names Jenn Chase as Chief Marketing Officer, Executive Vice President
SAS promoted Jenn Chase, Senior Vice President and Head of Marketing, to the Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President position. Chase’s 20-year career with SAS includes time in both R+D and marketing. As SVP, Chase initiated the relaunch of the SAS brand earlier this year, and led the pandemic-induced online pivot for the two most recent SAS Global Forums.
DataRobot Expands C-Suite with New CPO, CTO, and CMO
DataRobot grew its C-Suite this week, pulling in Elise Leung Cole from Cisco to serve as the new Chief People Officer, and promoting Michael Schmidt and Nick King from within as the new CTO and CMO respectively. Cole previously was the VP & Deputy General Counsel at Cisco, leading the team supporting sales and marketing, and creating compliance, training, and career developments within the organization. Prior to her time at Cisco, Cole served as General Counsel at AppDynamics.
Schmidt came to DataRobot as the founder of Nutonian, which DataRobot acquired in 2017. He helped develop DataRobot’s Automated Time Series product, and led the partnership with the US government to assure speedy and equitable COVID-19 vaccine trials. King joined DataRobot in April as the SVP of Marketing. Prior to that, King held executive positions at Cisco, VMWare, Google, and Microsoft. The expanded CMO role puts King in charge of global marketing and brand strategy.