Alation Nabs $50M Series C Financing

The round was led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from new investor Salesforce Ventures and existing investors Costanoa Ventures, DCVC (Data Collective), Harmony Partners, and Icon Ventures.

The Series C funding round will be used to further Alation's leadership in the Machine Learning Data Catalog market and accelerate engineering investment in the award-winning Alation Data Catalog. In the last year, Alation has seen triple-digit revenue growth and exceeded 100 production implementations, including new customers Daimler, Fox Networks, and Hilton Hotels. At the same time, existing Alation customers, like eBay, Munich Re, and Pfizer, are expanding their usage of Alation from hundreds of daily users to thousands – leading to a net expansion rate for Alation of 47 percent.

"As growth investors, we look for companies demonstrating rapid and sustainable expansion with differentiated technology and incredible market potential. Organic demand for data catalogs today is tremendous, and Alation is leading the charge on taking advantage of this organic need to bridge data, analytics, and business outcomes. With their rapid expansion, Alation has the opportunity for a long-term sustainable, stand-alone analytics company focused on cataloging," said Anders Ranum, partner at Sapphire Ventures. "Alation is in the rare position of having designed a transformational product and go-to-market strategy that will drive value from years of existing IT technology investments. We are excited to provide the support that will accelerate Alation's ability to capture this tremendous market opportunity."

Alation is the leader in the data cataloging category and was the first to bring a data catalog to market. The Alation Data Catalog combines machine learning and human collaboration to drive business outcomes from self-service analytics, including analyst productivity and trusted data for executive decision-making. The current round of financing validates Alation's market leadership achieved through technical and business model innovation, as Alation accelerates global adoption and continues to close the gap between data analysis and confident data-driven decisions. The company will continue to expand the capabilities of the data catalog to meet a wide range of users and use cases, with the investment driving a doubling of engineering resources and funding research and development initiatives that build on Alation machine learning innovations, like Behavior I/O and SmartSuggest.

"At Munich Re, an initial group of actuaries started using the Alation Data Catalog to collaborate and discover data in our new data lake several years ago. Soon they realized that Alation can be used for much more than discovery. Now, we have a large population of Alation users that are knowledge workers, building on what is known and deriving new knowledge in the form of datasets, algorithms and innovative new risk products, which have led to new insurance solutions, particularly in natural energy and cyber-risk," said Wolfgang Hauner, CDO of Munich Re. "Alation has proved to be an important catalyst for the kinds of collaboration that lead to new innovations."

Despite big investment in big data, less than a third of companies are connecting analytics to action. While the rise of self-service analytics has given more people access to data, data users have trouble finding the right data, discerning what is accurate, and selecting an appropriate data set for the analysis at hand. The Alation Data Catalog closes the gap between investments in self-service analytics and business value. According to Gartner, "By 2020, organizations that offer users access to a curated catalog of internal and external data will realize twice the business value from analytics investments than those that do not."*

"With the rise of self-service analytics, the Alation Data Catalog has become the crucial single-source of reference for organizations seeking to be data-driven, allowing everyone from the business user to the data scientist to find the data they need and understand whether it is right for the analysis at hand," said Satyen Sangani, CEO and co-founder of Alation. "With the support of Sapphire, Salesforce, and our existing investors, we're confident that we'll continue to accelerate our company growth and meet the growing demand for data catalogs around the globe."

About Alation
Alation, the data catalog company, is building a data-fluent world by changing the way people find, understand and trust data. The first to bring a data catalog to market, Alation combines machine learning and human collaboration to bring confidence to data-driven decisions. More than 100 organizations, including the City of San Diego, eBay, Munich Re and Pfizer, leverage the Alation Data Catalog. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Alation is funded by Costanoa Ventures, DCVC (Data Collective), Harmony Partners, Icon Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Sapphire Ventures. For more information, visit alation.com.

About Sapphire Ventures
Sapphire Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on helping innovative technology companies become global category leaders. Leveraging nearly two decades of experience and an extensive global enterprise network, Sapphire Ventures invests capital, resources, and expertise to enable its portfolio companies to scale rapidly. Whether entrepreneurs sell to businesses, consumers or both, Sapphire Ventures offers a powerful platform for business development and operational excellence to help them accelerate growth. With $2.5 billion under management via direct growth investments and early-stage fund investments, Sapphire Ventures is positioned to elevate companies to the global stage.

About Salesforce Ventures
Salesforce is the fastest growing top five enterprise software company and the #1 CRM provider globally. Salesforce Ventures — the company's corporate investment group — invests in the next generation of enterprise technology that extends the power of the Salesforce Customer Success Platform, helping companies connect with their customers in entirely new ways. Portfolio companies receive funding as well as access to the world's largest cloud ecosystem and the guidance of Salesforce's innovators and executives. With Salesforce Ventures, portfolio companies can also leverage Salesforce's expertise in corporate philanthropy by joining Pledge 1% to make giving back part of their business model. Salesforce Ventures has invested in more than 280 enterprise cloud startups in 18 different countries since 2009. For more information, please visit www.salesforce.com/ventures.