data.world Secures $26 Million in Venture Capital Funding

Data catalog company receives notable support from new and existing investors in response to strong enterprise demand; adds two board members


AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- data.world, the cloud-native enterprise data catalog company, today announced it has closed a $26 million round of venture capital funding led by Tech Pioneers Fund. Other participants in the round include new investors Breyer Capital, Prologis Ventures, and Alumni Ventures Group. Existing investors, Shasta Ventures, OurCrowd, and Workday Ventures also participated, along with several prominent angel investors including Arthur Patterson, Lincoln Brown, and Cotter Cunningham.

In addition, Scott Booth, chairman of Tech Pioneers Fund, and Sally Jenkins, chief marketing officer (CMO) at Elastic and former CMO of Informatica, join data.world’s board of directors.

“Building thriving data cultures that empower everyone in an enterprise to make smarter, data-driven decisions is no longer a story of transformation. It’s an absolute imperative,” said Brett Hurt, co-founder and CEO of data.world. “This requires a foundation of technology and agile processes that make enterprise data findable, accessible, and understandable. Our customers rely on data.world’s enterprise data catalog and governance capabilities to help them meet their critical business goals and thrive in this new economy. And having this level of investor validation, where we raised most of our round after COVID-19 hit, is a testament to our team’s performance and our ambitious mission to help our customers and the world become more data-driven.”

The additional capital allows data.world to accelerate its agile data governance initiatives, scale to meet increased market demand for its enterprise platform, and continue to deliver its innovative brand of product and customer service. The latest infusion of capital puts the total raised by data.world at $71.3 million. The company delivers the industry’s only cloud-native enterprise data catalog and is redefining how people discover, access, govern, analyze, and gain insights from data.

Leading global organizations including the Associated Press, Prologis, WPP, and Wunderman Thompson Data take advantage of the platform’s intuitive user interface, unique agile data governance capabilities, knowledge graph, and extensive partner ecosystem to unlock their data and transform their business.

“We rely on data.world to help our analysts and business leaders make data-driven decisions about real estate investments and global supply chain opportunities,” said Luke Slotwinski, vice president of Data & Analytics at Prologis. “data.world’s intuitive interface and powerful technology, including their knowledge graph, makes data discovery and exploration more accessible and immediately actionable to our business. Having deployed data.world’s solution, we have seen firsthand its impact as a data multiplier and are pleased to invest in its latest funding round via Prologis Ventures. We are thrilled to be a data.world customer and business partner.”

This round of funding follows a record-breaking year for the company. Noteworthy milestones include:

  • Continued quarter-over-quarter customer expansion and new customer acquisition.
  • Strong customer reviews via Gartner Peer Insights, and one of the only metadata management solutions with a 100% “would recommend” rating.
  • Continuous release cycle that delivered more than 1,000 platform updates in the past 12 months, including enhanced capabilities for agile data governance and automated business and technical data lineage.
  • Strategic partnerships and extended product integrations with AWS, Snowflake, Semantic Web Company, MANTA, and more.
  • The launch of the Coronavirus Data Resource Hub, a free and open data catalog for COVID-19 research. 
  • Recertification and advancement of its B Corporation mission to impact the global community working with open data and analyses.

To learn more about data.world and its customers, join data.world summit on September 23rd at 11:00am CDT. For more details about the funding round, read Brett Hurt’s blog post.

Supporting Quotes
“As one of the original investors in both Alibaba and Compass, I’ve seen how critical data is in driving company performance. data.world is changing the way enterprises think about and use data,” said Scott Booth, chairman of Tech Pioneers Fund. “It’s not simply for the data scientists and engineers, but for everyone in an organization. That bears out in how quickly the platform is deployed, adopted, and attached to business-critical use cases. We see this pattern again and again within data.world’s expanding customer base, and it’s one of many reasons we’re so excited to work with the team and accelerate the market opportunity.”

“data.world is addressing the multi-billion dollar enterprise data catalog and governance problem space. Every enterprise around the world has this same pain point -- how to make the data in all of the data lakes and warehouses findable, understandable, addressable, and reusable across their organization,” said Sally Jenkins, CMO at Elastic. “As a data and analytics industry veteran, I value the company’s unique approach and commitment to customer success. I’m really excited to work with and advise the data.world team.”

“I am thrilled to be investing in data.world,” said Jim Breyer, founder of Breyer Capital. “Breyer Capital is excited to back yet another top-notch company in Austin and we're thrilled that data.world is a B Corporation. We are so excited by the company's unique vision and stellar team, combined with its exceptional performance.”

About data.world
data.world makes it easy for everyone—not just the "data people"—to get clear, accurate, and fast answers to any business question. Our cloud-native data catalog maps your siloed, distributed data to familiar and consistent business concepts, creating a unified body of knowledge anyone can find, understand, and use. data.world is an Austin-based Certified B Corporation and public benefit corporation and home to the world’s largest collaborative open data community. Visit data.world for more information and expert guidance.

Media Contact
Brittany Edwards
Phone: 210-382-2165
Email: brittany.edwards@data.world