DataGravity Raises $30M to Make Magic of NetApp, EMC + EqualLogic Smarts
DataGravity is a stealth startup that’s trying to make it easier for users to extract the best insight from raw data. The company is keeping a tight lid on the project, but it’s clearly something big, based on the sheer amount of funding it’s raised to date.
This morning, the New Hampshire-based firm announced a massive $30 million Series B financing round led by prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The sum is identical to what VMware invested in Puppet Labs last week for the sake of a strategic partnership through which the latter’s management framework will be integrated with its core cloud line-up.
DataGravity is the brainchild of EqualLogic co-founder Paula Long and John Jospeh, who served as the storage vendor’s head of products and marketing for several years. The startup first made a splash in June last year when it raised $12 million from General Catalyst and Charles River Ventures, an early backer of EqualLogic.
Long and Jospeh gave an interview to Boston.com shortly after the Series A round to provide a sneak peek into what it is they’re working on.
“People talk about dollars per gigabyte and dollars per IOPS. We think there’s going to be a new model that looks at dollars as they relate to information,” Long said. Joseph added that “we are thinking about the contextual relationship between information, and the solution a person might be looking for.”
The entrepreneurs make it clear that DataGravity is a software firm, but Long stressed that hardware is not completely off the table: “we haven’t ruled out creating an accelerator to do analytics on massive amounts of data.” Bruce Sachs of Charles River offered more info, noting that the startup is approaching the exponential growth of data from a new angle.
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