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June 25: From BI to AI (including Apache Kafka, Confluent, Dataiku, Datarobot, Domino Data Lab, Firebolt, Incorta, Palantir, Primer, Rasgo, Splunk)

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

Product Launches and Updates

Domino 4.4 Now Available

On Tuesday, June 21, Domino Data Lab announced the availability of Domino 4.4. New capabilities include Durable Workspaces, allowing data scientists to operate with multiple environments open at once; CodeSync, enhancing Domino’s existing reproducibility capabilities with native integration with common Git repositories; and the abilities to encrypt data in transit and mount NFS volumes directly to Domino. Domino 4.4 is available for existing customers immediately.

Dataiku Launches in AWS Marketplace

On June 21, Dataiku announced its availability in the AWS Marketplace. AWS customers can now use Dataiku’s visual interface to orchestrate their data pipelines and machine learning models applied to their cloud data, and Dataiku projects based on AWS-hosted data can also incorporate AWS Machine Learning Services such as computer vision or text analytics.

Palantir, DataRobot Partner to Bring Speed and Agility to Demand Forecasting Models

DataRobot and Palantir announced a new partnership on Thursday, June 24, around solving demand forecasting problems for retailers. The new Demand Forecasting framework links Palantir Foundry with DataRobot’s Model Development and Model Deployment capabilities. Prepped data is piped directly from Foundry into DataRobot where forecasting models are trained, then brought back into Foundry for operationalization.

Splunk Launches New Security Cloud

On June 22, Splunk debuted the Splunk Security Cloud, a SecOps platform with integrated security analytics and threat intelligence and an open ecosystem to correlate data across all security tools. Splunk also announced a $1B investment from Silver Lake; the funding will go towards further growth of Splunk and its ongoing cloud transformation, as well as managing a newly authorized share repurchase program.

Funding

Firebolt Ignites Growth with a $127M Series B Funding Round

Firebolt, a cloud data warehouse company, raised $127M in Series B funding this week, following up on a $37M Series A round from December 2020. All investors from the A round participated, including Angular Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, TLV Partners, and Zeev Ventures, with new investors Dawn Capital and K5 Global joining the B round. Firebolt will use the funding to expand its product, engineering, and go-to-market teams.

Incorta Raises $120M in Series D Funding

Wednesday, June 23, Incorta announced a $120M Series D funding round led by Prysm Capital. Other participants included GV, Kleiner Perkins, M12, Sorenson Capital, Telstra Ventures, Wipro Ventures, and new investor National Grid Ventures. This round of funding will go towards expanding Incorta’s go-to-market operations and meeting demand for Incorta’s data analytics platform.

Primer Raises $110M Series C

Primer, a natural language processing company, raised $110M in a Series C funding round, announced on Tuesday, June 24. Lee Fixel’s Addition led the round, with participation from existing investors Amplify Partners, Avalon Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, DCVC, Lux Capital, and Section 32, as well as new investors Crumpton Ventures, J2 Ventures, Sands Capital, and Steadfast. Primer also announced two partnerships: one with Microsoft to make Primer available within Azure, as well as a partnership with Palantir to make Primer available within the Palantir platform.

Rasgo Raises $20M Series A

Rasgo, a feature store, announced that it had raised an additional $20M in funding as a Series A round. Insight Partners led the round, with participation by existing investor Unusual Ventures. Rasgo will use the funds to expand its team with a focus on engineering talent, accelerate product development, and build its go-to-market.

Confluent IPO

Confluent, a data streaming platform, had its IPO June 24, raising $828M. Even with an initial offering price of $36/share, above its intended range of $29-$33/share, shares of Confluent closed up at over $45/share by the end of the first day of trading to reach a valuation of over $11 billion, indicating the continued importance of streaming analytics in supporting two key challenges: real-time context and real-time response.

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June 18: From BI to AI (Altair SmartWorks, Crate.io, Dataiku, Dataiku Online, Datarobot, Neo4j, SAS, Transform)

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

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.