December 17th, 2013 — Data management, M&A
Cumulative VC funding for Hadoop and NoSQL vendors broke through the $1bn barrier in 2013, according a Spotlight report published by 451 Research, based on data provided by The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase.
The data indicates that there was a substantial increase in funding in 2013 ($530.5m, not including RethinkDB’s $8m announced yesterday) compared to 2012 ($190.9m), thanks to major rounds for the likes of MongoDB, Pivotal, Hortonworks and DataStax.
The report includes a visualization created by 451’s Director of Data Strategy and Solutions, Barbara Peng, that illustrates the connections between the various investors and the NoSQL and Hadoop vendors in which they have invested.
A snapshot of the visualization is shown below but the the original is interactive, enabling 451 Research clients to drag the various elements around for greater emphasis, as well as isolate the NoSQL or Hadoop categories.
451 Research clients can also scroll over the blue circles to see the total amount of funding raised by the individual Hadoop and NoSQL vendors, and scroll over the smaller orange circles to see which investors have backed which companies.
The sample set was limited to 16 vendors for visual clarity, but the six Hadoop and 10 NoSQL providers cited account for more than 87% of funding to date (with Pivotal representing the vast majority of the remaining 13%).
This visualization illustrates that investment in Hadoop and NoSQL providers comes from a relatively small group of VC firms (52 to be specific, excluding individual seed investors), resulting in a relatively tightly clustered graph.
However, the visualization also enables us to put to the test the recent blog post by MarkLogic’s Adam Fowler in which he stated:
“Just look at the number of investors who are investing in multiple NoSQL companies. They’re hedging their bets because they’re not sure themselves which businesses will survive.”
In fact investment in multiple Hadoop and NoSQL vendors is relatively rare. Only 11 out of the 52 VC firms have invested in more than one Hadoop and/or NoSQL vendor, with seven of those picking one Hadoop vendor and one NoSQL provider. Less hedging their bets as picking a winner in each category.
Of the remaining four investment shops, two have invested in one Hadoop distributor, one NoSQL specialist and one Hadoop-as-a-service provider (MapR, DataStax and Qubole for Lightspeed Venture Partners; Cloudera, Couchbase and Altiscale for Accel Partners), while In-Q-Tel has invested in one Hadoop supplier, one NoSQL vendor and one NoSQL-as-a-service provider (Cloudera, MongoDB and Cloudant).
Only Sequoia Capital has invested in multiple NoSQL vendors (as well as Hadoop-as-a-service provider Altiscale) having invested in MongoDB, DataStax and – hold onto your hats, irony fans – MarkLogic. It should be noted however that Sequoia has not invested in DataStax since its series A round in late 2010.
The full report, Venture funding for Hadoop and NoSQL vendors tops $1bn is available now to 451 Research clients and also includes our perspective on when combined Hadoop and NoSQL revenue might begin to exceed combined Hadoop and NoSQL VC funding, as well as the potential for M&A and IPO activity in 2014.
October 4th, 2012 — Data management
SkySQL goes cloud. RainStor raises $12m. And more
And that’s the Data Day, today.
November 15th, 2011 — Data management
451 Research has today published a report looking at the funding being invested in Apache Hadoop- and NoSQL database-related vendors. The full report is available to clients, but below is a snapshot of the report, along with a graphic representation of the recent up-tick in funding.
According to our figures, between the beginning of 2008 and the end of 2010 $95.8m had been invested in the various Apache Hadoop- and NoSQL-related vendors. That figure now stands at more than $350.8m, up 266%.
That statistic does not really do justice to the sudden uptick of interest, however. The figures indicate that funding for Apache Hadoop- and NoSQL-related firms has more than doubled since the end of August, at which point the total stood at $157.5m.
A substantial reason for that huge jump is the staggering $84m series A funding round raised by Apache Hadoop-based analytics service provider Opera Solutions.
The original commercial supporter of Apache Hadoop, Cloudera, has also contributed strongly with a recent $40m series D round. In addition, MapR Technologies raised $20m to invest in its Apache Hadoop distribution, while we know that Hortonworks also raised a substantial round (unconfirmed, but reportedly $20m) from Benchmark Capital and former parent Yahoo as it was spun off in June. Index Ventures also recently announced that it has become an investor in Hortonworks.
I am reliably informed that if you factor in Hortonworks’ two undisclosed rounds, the total funding for Hadoop and NoSQL vendors is actually closer to $400m.
The various NoSQL database providers have also played a part in the recent burst of investment, with 10gen raising a $20m series D round and Couchbase raising $15m. DataStax, which has interests in both Apache Cassandra and Apache Hadoop, raised an $11m series B round, while Neo Technology raised a $10.6m series A round. Basho Technologies raised $12.5m in series D funding in three chunks during 2011.
Additionally, there are a variety of associated players, including Hadoop-based analytics providers such as Datameer, Karmasphere and Zettaset, as well as hosted NoSQL firms such as MongoLab, MongoHQ and Cloudant.
One investor company name that crops up more than most in the list above is Accel Partners, which was an original investor in both Cloudera and Couchbase, and backed Opera Solutions via its Accel- KKR joint venture with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.
It appears that those investments have merely whetted Accel’s appetite for big data, however, as the firm last week announced a $100m Big Data Fund to invest in new businesses targeting storage, data management and analytics, as well as data-centric applications and tools.
While Accel is the fist VC shop that we are aware of to create a fund specifically for big data investments, we are confident both that it won’t be the last and that other VCs have already informally earmarked funds for data-related investments.
451 clients can get more details on funding and M&A involving more traditional database vendors, as well as our perspective on potential M&A suitors for the Hadoop and NoSQL players.
Subscribe via RSS