Category: Data Science

Funding and Finance

StarTree Raises $47M in Series B Funding

Realtime analytics platform StarTree announced a $47M Series B funding round this week. GGV Capital led the round, with participation from existing investors Bain Capital Ventures and CRV, and new investor Sapphire Ventures. StarTree will use the funding for product development and to grow its sales and marketing capabilities.

Updates and Launches

CelerData Incorporates From StarRocks 

Realtime analytics provider StarRocks announced that they had incorporated CelerData to lead StarRocks development, grow its dev community, and build commercial products based on StarRocks. Forthcoming releases include CelerData Enterprise as an on-prem deployment of StarRocks with added enterprise security features, and CelerData Cloud, a managed cloud service. 

Run:ai Reveals Hybrid Cloud AI Orchestration Capabilities for Atlas Platform 

AI compute orchestration provider Run:ai announced that their Atlas Platform now supports hybrid cloud and multi-cloud AI infrastructure. Atlas provides a centralized panel that abstracts connecting to cloud platforms’ Kubernetes infrastructure, simplifying the process of managing compute orchestration.

Teradata Debuts VantageCloud Lake

Teradata Updates ClearScape Analytics

Teradata made two major announcements this week. Cloud data lake VantageCloud Lake launched on AWS, marking Teradata’s first venture on its brand new cloud-native architecture. It’s intended to be a self-service counterpart to VantageCloud Enterprise, which is designed for a more traditional IT-managed environment. Teradata also announced updates to its analytics platform, ClearScape Analytics. New features include new time-series and machine learning in-database analytics capabilities, as well as an integrated and governed model management framework. VantageCloud Lake is available on AWS now, with availability on other major cloud networks in early 2023; ClearScape Analytics is available today.

Acquisitions and Partnerships

Data Engineering Automation Company Nexla Acquires Clean Data Provider Fidap  Nexla, a data engineering automation company, announced late last week that they would acquire Fidap, a provider of cleansed data. As a result of the acquisition, Nexla will provide ready-to-use datasets, both public and commercial.

Funding and Financials

Salesforce Announces Q2 2023 Fiscal Results 

Salesforce released its Q2 2023 financial report on August 24. Revenues were up 22% year over year, at $7.72B for the quarter. Despite the improvement in revenues, CRM stock dropped over 6% after the report was released.

Snowflake Reports Q2 2023 Financial Results

Snowflake released their Q2 2023 fiscal results the same day as Salesforce. Snowflake revenues were up 83% year over year, with $497.2M in total revenue for the quarter. These numbers were strong enough SNOW jumped nearly 20% at the opening bell, though Snowflake stock is currently trading at just below $200/share, about half of its previous peak value.

Vector Database Company Zilliz Raises Additional $60 Million in Series B Extension

 Zilliz, a vector database company, raised an additional $60M in funding in an extension to its earlier $43B Series B round. Prosperity7 Ventures led the extension, with participation from 5Y Capital, Hillhouse Capital, Temasek’s Pavillion Capital, and Yunqi Capital. Zilliz will use the additional funding to continue expanding its engineering and go-to-market teams, once they’ve opened their new Silicon Valley HQ.

Launches and Updates

Alteryx Releases Alteryx Server-FIPS for Public Sector Analytics 

Following up on their May release of Alteryx Designer-FIPS, Alteryx announced this week the launch of Alteryx Server-FIPS. Alteryx’s FIPS releases are compatible with the Federal Information Processing Standards  for data and computer security, which apply to public sector computing environments that require high-quality data encryption. Alteryx Server-FIPS will allow analyst teams within public sector organizations to collaborate on analytic workflows, macros, and apps.

BigID Debuts Auto-Classification for Data Governance

Data intelligence platform BigID announced auto-classification capabilities for data governance and management. Organizations will be able to automatically classify and tag data for governance purposes, even in multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments. 

Domino Data Lab Obtains ISO 27001:2013 Certification

On August 24, Domino Data Lab announced that they had achieved ISO 27001:2013 certification. ISO 27001:2013 standards require following strict rules around data security, risk management, continuous monitoring and improvement, and personnel training to assure end-to-end security around accessing and using sensitive data in machine learning models.

Incorta Adds Component SDK, Marketplace, Additional Data Apps 

Incorta announced new data applications for a number of platforms, opening up Incorta capabilities to new types of data. The new data apps include Workday (Workforce and Compensation), SAP ECC (Financials and Supply Chain), and Oracle EBS and Cloud ERP (Financials and Supply Chain, and Human Capital Management). Incorta also debuted the Incorta Marketplace, allowing Incorta users to share analytic content in the form of additional data apps, as well as custom visualizations and dashboard controls. Finally, Incorta also released a component SDK that developers can use to create new data connectors beyond the library of already-existing ones.

Sisu Expands Capabilities with Automated Analytics 

Sisu Data has added new features to its Sisu Decision Intelligence Engine. With these new features, Sisu customers will be able to automatically detect trends and anomalies in data, and augment analytics workflows with “automated analytics” to track and understand how and why metrics change and predict the future impact of such changes.

Acquisitions and Partnerships

OpenText to Acquire Micro Focus International PLC

On August 25, OpenText announced its intent to acquire British software and IT firm Micro Focus at £5.32 per share, implying an estimated total value for Micro Focus around $6B. The acquisition is expected to close in early 2023. From our BI to AI perspective, this acquisition helps augment OpenText’s existing analytics capabilities through Micro Focus’ Vertica analytics platform, in addition to a broad set of capabilities available in the rest of Micro Focus’ broad portfolio.

SAS Integrates Viya with SingleStore

Analytics firm SAS and cloud database SingleStore have announced an integration between SAS Viya and SingleStore as part of their ongoing partnership. SAS Viya with SingleStore will allow SAS analytics and AI services to be used on data stored in SingleStore.

Funding and Financials

Customer-Facing Analytics Solution Explo Raises $12M Series A 

Customer-facing analytics solution Explo has raised $12M in a Series A funding round. Craft Ventures led the round, with participation from Amplo VC and Felicis Ventures. Explo will use the funding to further their product roadmap.

Unified BI Platform Omni Emerges from Stealth, Raises $26.9M in Funding

BI platform Omni launched publicly this week with $26.9M in funding. Redpoint led the $17.5M Series A, with participation from First Round and GV. A seed round was raised back in April, led by First Round, with participation from BoxGroup, GV, Quiet Capital, Redpoint, and Scribble Ventures. Omni was founded by Looker alums Colin Zima (Chief Analytics Officer) and Jamie Davidson (former VP of Product), and former Stitch CTO Christopher Merrick. 

Updates and Launches

Cloudera Launches First All-in-One Data Lakehouse Cloud Service 

Cloudera launched Cloudera Data Platform One, an integrated SaaS data lakehous solution. CDP One includes cloud compute, cloud storage, streaming analytics, machine learning, and security under one roof, on private single-tenant cloud infrastructure, with the aim of permitting secure self-service analytics and exploratory data science in the cloud. CDP One is currently available on a limited basis, with wider availability planned for later in 2022.

data.world Announces Eureka Explorer Lineage

Enterprise data catalog data.world debuted Eureka Explorer Lineage this week, a data lineage product built atop data.world’s knowledge graph. Eureka Explorer Lineage shows the flow of data from source to analysis, revealing where data is sourced, where it’s aggregated, and whether or not it has been transformed at any point. Explorer Lineage also uses the knowledge graph to map data to business concepts, making it easier for nontechnical team members to understand what their data is saying.

integrate.ai Releases Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning and Analytics Platform

SaaS company integrate.ai debuted its machine learning and analytics platform, focused on preserving the security and privacy of sensitive data while still allowing machine learning and analytics capabilities to be performed. Machine learning traditionally requires centralizing and aggregating data sources, which may not be possible with certain types of data. integrate.ai works via federated machine learning, which allows data to remain distributed while being analyzed, and the aggregated end results maintain the privacy of the original data.

InterSystems Announces Numerous Updates to IRIS

InterSystems announced new releases for its data platform IRIS. The additions of Embedded Python and IntegratedML to IRIS will accelerate and simplify creating smart data fabrics. InterSystems also announced better collaboration facilities for data analysts and data scientists to make their work usable by each other without having to move the underlying data at any point in the process. Improvements to Adaptive Analytics were also released, allowing business users to more easily explore data ad hoc.  Finally, InterSystems announced a partnership with data intelligence platform Collibra, allowing customers to take advantage of Collibra’s data governance, privacy, and quality capabilities.

Hiring

Alteryx Names Steve Brodrick as Chief Transformation Officer | Alteryx

Steve Brodrick joined Alteryx this week as their Chief Transformation Officer. Brodrick comes to Alteryx from Stanley Black and Decker, where he focused on financial and transformation efforts over the last 20 years. Brodrick will report directly to Alteryx President and CRO Paula Hansen

Funding

Dropbase Reveals $1.75M Funding Round
Data management company Dropbase announced that they had raised a $1.75M venture funding round this week. Gradient Ventures led the round, with additional participation from Bragiel Brothers, Liquid 2 Ventures, Unpopular Ventures, Y Combinator, and additional angel investors. The funds will be used to XYZ. Dropbase allows users to drag and drop a simple CSV file into a Postgres database while addressing typical dirty data issues on the fly.

Launches and Updates

Mighty Canary Introduces “Trustmark” for Realtime Data
Data trust company Mighty Canary introduced the concept of a “trustmark” this week. Trustmarks report on the state of existing data pipelines, noting the freshness of realtime data on a dashboard. This allows business users to better understand – and trust – that the data on their dashboards is accurate and timely, and note when there are relevant issues. Mighty Canary is currently in beta.

Verta Adds Enterprise-Focused Capabilities to its MLOps Platform
MLOps platform Verta added several new integrations to its MLOps platform. Key new capabilities include support for Active Directory and OAuth, enabling single sign-on (SSO) and automating user provisioning and management; Python Package Index (PyPi =) integration, allowing teams to securely share Python packages and dependencies within their organization; Datadog integration, which will send operational and endpoint metrics from Verta to Datadog so that teams have better visibility into their machine learning models; Apache Kafka integration for simple scalable deployment; and finally, vulnerability scanning throughout the machine learning lifecycle to improve model security.

Partnerships

Anaconda Announces Strategic Cloud Partnership with Oracle
On August 9, Anaconda announced a partnership with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Anaconda will embed its repository of open source Python and R packages within OCI’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Services., giving customers access to Anaconda without requiring a separate license.

Anaconda Announces Strategic Cloud Partnership with Oracle
On August 9, Anaconda announced a partnership with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Anaconda will embed its repository of open source Python and R packages within OCI’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Services., giving customers access to Anaconda without requiring a separate license.

Funding and Finance

FeatureByte Emerges from Stealth with $5.7M Seed Round

Feature engineering and management platform FeatureByte launched this week, announcing a $5.7M seed round led by Glasswing Ventures and Tola Capital. The funding will go towards scaling up R+D and go-to-market operations. The FeatureByte founders came from DataRobot, where CEO Razi Raziuddin was the SVP of AI Services and Chief Product Officer Xavier Conort was the Chief Data Scientist. FeatureByte looks to simplify the creation and management of AI model features.

Informatica Reports Q2 2022 Financial Results

On July 27, Informatica announced its Q2 2022 financial results. Revenues of $372M beat expectations by $7.8M; earnings were above expectations at $0.16 per share. INFA is up since the earnings announcement.

Microsoft Announces Q4 2022 Financial Results
On July 26, Microsoft announced its Q4 2022 financial results. Revenues ($51.87B) and earnings ($2.23/share) were both slightly lower than expected. MSFT dipped a bit in the market, but ended the week up.

Updates and Launches

Expert.ai Adds New Features to its Natural Language Platform

Natural language platform Expert.ai made improvements to its natural language platform. Key new features include improved data labeling with active learning capabilities, automatic generation of extraction rules enabling users to generate rule-based models, and pre-trained knowledge models in specific domains.

Fiddler Updates Machine Learning Model Management

Fiddler, a model performance management platform, revealed new capabilities this week. Fiddler customers will now be able to use vector monitoring to better observe models in production involving unstructured data, such as ones based on natural language processing and computer vision. Fiddler will also surface more low-frequency events that can contribute to subtle model drift while concealing issues such as fraudulent transactions. Finally, Fiddler has also unveiled a “single pane of glass” user interface, allowing data science and MLOps teams to view and manage models from a centralized dashboard.

Partnerships

Datafold and Hightouch Debut Integration
Data reliability company Datafold and data activation platform Hightouch announced an integration to alert data engineers whenever a dbt data model change will impact data involved in a Hightouch sync. Hightouch automates data integration from data warehouses to business systems such as CRMs, ERPs, and custom applications; data model changes upstream or downstream can break data syncs. Datafold’s Data Diff combines with Hightouch to alert data engineers to potential issues before they become issues in production.

Domino Data Lab and Alexander Thamm Partner to Scale Data Science in Germany, Austria, Switzerland
Domino Data Lab announced a partnership with consultancy Alexander Thamm to help customers in the German-speaking DACH region accelerate their data science implementation timelines. The Data Science Journey Accelerator will pair Domino’s Enterprise MLOps platform with Alexander Thamm’s consulting services for data science and data engineering. Offerings will include assessments in data strategy, the data science lifecycle, and business value, as well as creating proofs of concept.

Hiring

Debanjan Saha Steps Into DataRobot Interim CEO Role

DataRobot President and COO Debanjan Saha has been appointed interim CEO in the wake of Dan Wright stepping down from the CEO position. Saha joined DataRobot in February 2022. Prior to DataRobot, Saja was the VP and GM of Data Analytics at Google, as well asthe VP and GM for Amazon Aurora and RDS. Saha also spent a decade at IBM, primarily in storage and analytics.

Wright will continue with DataRobot in an advisory role during the executive search for a permanent CEO.

Launches and Updates

Datatron Releases Version 3.0

MLOps platform Datatron released version 3.0 this week. Key new features include integration with JupyterHub, allowing data scientists to operationalize models directly from their notebook-interface coding environment; simpler deployment and management facilities ffor all three major cloud platforms without needing to learn or manage Kubernetes; and an updated logging and operations dashboard, along with single sign-on support.

Oracle and Microsoft Present Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure

On July 20, Oracle and Microsoft announced Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure. Azure customers will be able to provision, access, and monitor Oracle Database services in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, connecting OD services running on OCI with apps in Azure that use data from those services. Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure is generally available now.

Pecan AI Debuts One-Click Data Science Model Deployment

Low-code automated predictive analytics company Pecan AI added one-click machine learning model deployment to its platform this week. Pecan also added model monitoring targeted towards low-code users, alerting them when models show signs of degradation. These two additions join existing features on the Pecan platform to automate all aspects of model creation and deployment.

Partnerships

Talend Enhances Cloudera Data Platform Support

Data integration platform Talend added new certifications for Cloudera Data Platform on the Public Cloud, and CDP data services including Data Engineering and Data Hub. Talend also revealed new native integrations with CDP Engineering, allowing data teams to autoscale Spark jobs without needing to manually configure and scale clusters.

Acquisitions

SAP Acquires Search Analytics Startup Askdata

SAP has acquired Italian search-driven analytics startup Askdata for an undisclosed sum. Askdata uses machine learning and natural language processing models to make it easier for less-technical users to interrogate data in place. Askdata will become part of a future analytics solution for SAP Analytics Cloud.

Funding and Financials

In addition to the funding rounds mentioned below, Alteryx, Microsoft, and SAP all announced the release dates for their next quarterly earnings reports. Alteryx will report their Q2 financial results on Tuesday, August 2; Microsoft will report their Q4 financials on Tuesday, July 26; and SAP will report their Q2 financials on Thursday, July 21.

AssemblyAI: $30M Series B Round

Automatic speech recognition platform AssemblyAI picked up $30M in Series B funding. Insight Partners led the round, with participation from existing investors Accel and Y Combinator. AssemblyAI will use the funding to grow their AI research team and accelerate product development.

Deci Raises $25M Series B

Deep learning AI building company Deci raised a $25M Series B round. Insight Partners led this round as well (busy week), with participation from existing investors Emerge, Fort Ross Ventures, Jibe Ventures, and Square Peg, and new investor ICON. Deci will use the funding to grow go-to-market efforts and R+D.

SingleStore Announces $116M F Round, New CFO and GC

Cloud-native analytics database provider SingleStore announced a $116M Series F round of financing this week. Goldman Sachs Asset Management led this round, with participation from current investors Dell Technologies Capital, GV, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM Ventures, and Insight Partners, as well as new investor Sanabil Investments.

SingleStore also welcomed two new [executive level] hires in recent weeks. Chief Financial Officer Brad Kinnish joins SingleStore from Aryaka Networks, where he also served as CFO. Prior to Aryaka, Kinnish was also the CFO at Marin Software, and the managing director of Software Investment Banking at Deutsche Bank. New General Counsel Meaghan Nelson was previously the associate general counsel at Veeva Systems as part of over a decade of legal experience.

Tecton Raises $100M Series C Round

Machine learning feature platform Tecton raised a $100M Series C funding round. New investor Kleiner Perkins led the round, with participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, along with new investors Bain Capital Ventures, Databricks Ventures, Snowflake Ventures, and Tiger Global. The funding will go towards additional hiring in engineering and go-to-market teams.

Updates and Launches

AWS Makes Three New Serverless Analytics Offerings Generally Available

AWS announced the general availability of three new serverless analytics offerings; with these, customers will be able to analyze massive amounts of data without needing to manage the supporting infrastructure. Amazon EMR Serverless will allow customers to run analytics apps using Apache Spark and Hive. Amazon MSK Serverless will simplify realtime data ingestion and streaming. Finally, Amazon Redshift Serverless will allow customers to manage high-performance data warehousing and analytics workloads without having to micromanage clusters.

TIBCO Unlocks the Power of Master Data Management Software-as-a-Service with the New TIBCO Cloud EBX | TIBCO Software
TIBCO ModelOps Significantly Improves Efficiency and Flexibility Across the Enterprise with Impactful AI | TIBCO Software

TIBCO revealed two major releases this week. TIBCO Cloud EBX is a SaaS-based Master Data Management solution, will let users manage their corporate data from anywhere. EBX is part of TIBCO Cloud Passport, a new consumption-based pricing plan enabling SaaS for various TIBCO capabilities. Key features of TIBCO Cloud EBX include a model-driven process for data management; the ability to manage every data domain with hierarchy management, match-and-merge functionality, and search and query capabilities; and easy ways to import and export data in bulk and access it via APIs.

TIBCO ModelOpswill provide self-service data science access to teams including business users, with the aim of deploying more machine learning models faster. All common model formats are supported in ModelOps, and governed models can currently be added to TIBCO Spotfire, TIBCO Data Virtualization, and TIBCO Streaming, with more options to follow.

If you would like your announcement to be included in Amalgam Insights’ weekly data and analytics roundups, please email lynne@amalgaminsights.com.

Acquisitions

IBM Expands Observability Capabilities with Databand.ai Acquisition

IBM announced Wednesday that they had acquired Databand.ai, a data observability software provider. Databand.ai looks for issues such as data anomalies, missing or incomplete data, and other problems that come up during the data transformation process. IBM suggests that pairing Databand.ai with IBM Observability by Instana APM and Watson Studio will combine application performance monitoring and data observability into a more complete observability platform spanning a broader spectrum of IT ops. Databand.ai employees will join IBM’s Data and AI group.

Launches and Updates

Meta Debuts Improved Language Translation Model and Dataset

Meta announced Wednesday that their AI researchers had built an AI model, NLLB-200 (No Language Left Behind) that significantly improves the accuracy of machine translation between 200 different languages. Meta also compiled the FLORES-200 dataset to measure NLLB-200’s language performance to ensure high-quality translations. Developers will be able to access both NLLB-200 and FLORES-200, and Meta will award $200,000 in grants for “impactful uses” of NLLB-200; specifically, researchers working in linguistics, machine translation, and language technology, as well as nonprofits translating two or more African languages, are invited to apply.

Ontotext Releases GraphDB 10.0

Ontotext announced GraphDB 10.0, the latest major release of their database engine. Key new features include a new high-availability cluster architecture with higher uptime, zero data loss, better fault tolerance, and better recovery from failures; an improved graph path search algorithm that can run in parallel mode in multicore environments, enabling faster processing on complex searches and the ability to handle more concurrent requests; improved full text search; and a simplified upgrade path requiring no development effort to upgrade from free to standard to enterprise editions of GraphDB.

Databricks Data + AI Announcements

Databricks Debuts Improvements to Data Lakehouse at Data + AI Summit

At Databricks’ Data + AI summit this week, Databricks announced myriad improvements to their Databricks Lakehouse Platform. Key enhancements include improvements to data governance and the Unity Catalog, public (Marketplace) and secure (Cleanroom) data asset sharing, MLflow 2.0 with simplified machine learning model deployment, and resource autoscaling for performance and cost efficiency in Delta Live Tables. Databricks also significantly augmented their data warehousing capabilities with an assortment of developer-focused improvements. But the announcement previewing Photon, their “record-setting query engine for lakehouses,” noting performance up to 12x better than traditional cloud data warehouses, marked a significant shot across Snowflake’s bow.

Notably, Databricks also open-sourced its Delta Lake contributions, to drive Delta Lake adoption and compete with Apache Iceberg and Apache Hudi.

Several companies made related announcements this week about their partnerships with Databricks in concert with the summit. Data security platform Immuta integrated its policy enforcement engine into Databricks’ Unity Catalog for better enforcement of data access policies. Matillion made Matillion ETL available on Databricks Partner Connect, permitting joint customers to more easily import business data into their Databricks lakehouse without requiring pre-configuration. Sigma Computing announced their new Databricks partnership and integration, providing a no-code spreadsheet interface into the lakehouse. And behavioral data creation platform Snowplow also announced a partnership with Databricks. Joint customers will be able to integrate Snowplow data into their Databricks lakehouse, along with Snowplow’s new custom-built web models, to build data-driven apps and composable customer data platforms (CCDPs).

Amalgam Insights’ Hyoun Park attended the Data + AI summit, and his perspective will be published next week.

Other Launches and Updates

Kyligence Debuts Unified Metrics Store

OLAP platform Kyligence announced Kyligence Zen, a unified metrics store platform. Kyligence Zen automates data pipelines between data lakes and warehouses and the Kyligence OLAP database, providing a centralized location for data analysts for accessing and combining data metrics.

TigerGraph Updates TigerGraph Cloud

Graph analytics platform TigerGraph added new features to its graph database as a service TigerGraph Cloud. The improvements are primarily enterprise-focused: enterprise identity and access management, connectivity meeting enterprise-level security standards, and broader accessibility with more options for regional access on all three major cloud providers, as well as expanding the free-tier support for developer learning to Azure.

Funding

Opaque Systems Raises $22 Million in Series A Funding

“Confidential computing” secure data analytics platform Opaque Systems has raised $22M in Series A funding. Walden Catalyst Ventures led the round, with participation by existing investors FactoryHQ, the House Fund, Intel Capital, and Race Capital, as well as new investors Storm Ventures and Thomvest Ventures. The funding will go towards hiring and accelerating R+D.

Snowplow Raises $40M in Series B Funding

In addition to the Databricks partnership mentioned earlier, Snowplow raised $40M in Series B funds this week. NEA led the funding round, with participation from existing investors Atlantic Bridge and MMC. Snowplow plans to use the funds for hiring, scaling globally, and broadening support for more data types on its platform.

Timecho Raises $10M Seed Round

IoT-native time-series database Timecho, based on open source Apache IoTDB, raised $10M. Sequoia China led the round, with additional support from Cloudwise, Gobi China, and Koalafund. The funding will go towards R+D to better support enterprise-scale IoT needs such as better end-edge cloud collaboration.

Hiring

Bridget Shea Appointed as Dataiku’s New Chief Customer Officer

Dataiku has appointed Bridget Shea as its new Chief Customer Officer. Shea has served in an advisory role with the Dataiku leadership team for several years. Prior to joining Dataiku, Shea was the Chief Customer Officer at Mural, a collaborative intelligence company, as well as leading other global go-to-market teams at Datorama, TellApart, and Yext.