DataStax raises $115M to grow its super-scalable, real-time Astra DB database

BIG DATA

DataStax Inc., one of the biggest and best-known privately owned database companies, got a little bit richer today, closing on a $115 million round of funding that brings its valuation to $1.6 billion.

Today’s private-equity round was led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s growth equity business and included participation from RCM Private Markets, EDB Investments Pte. Ltd. and existing investors Crosslink Capital, Meritech Capital Partners and OnePrime Capital.

DataStax is the company behind the incredibly popular open-source Apache Cassandra NoSQL database. Cassandra is used by hundreds of enterprises, including Apple Inc., Verizon Inc. and Visa Inc., because it provides a number of features that make it easier to manage huge volumes of data. The most critical is probably Cassandra’s capacity to store petabytes of information, though equally important is the high resiliency it offers, being able to withstand major outages. So long as at least one server in a Cassandra deployment stays up and running, the remaining machines can continue to operate.

DataStax has built a commercial offering on top of Cassandra called Astra DB that adds features to simplify deployment and day-to-day operations. For instance, Astra DB is a serverless cloud service, meaning that DataStax takes care of managing the underlying infra. In addition, companies get a choice of cloud platforms to host it on, with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud all supported. Astra DB also boasts more cybersecurity capabilities than Cassandra.

As well as Astra DB, DataStax sells a second service called Astra Streaming, which is a data streaming service built atop of Apache Pulsar, another open-source project. By combining Astra DB with Astra Streaming, developers can build and run cloud-hosted and real-time applications at massive scale.

Goldman Sachs’ managing director Holger Staude said it’s necessary for enterprise leaders today to run their businesses with real-time data to create instant intelligence. “That’s exactly what DataStax empowers companies to do, and why we are excited to support the next generation of digital applications with our investment,” he said.

DataStax didn’t provide any growth numbers for Cassandra or Astra DB, but insisted it’s coming on the heels of a strong first quarter during which the momentum of its product has soared.

DataStax Chairman and Chief Executive Chet Kapoor said the transformative power of real-time applications is impacting multiple industries.

“What’s clear is that we’re only in the early stages of what’s possible with new data-driven experiences that will serve a wide range of human needs, create virtuous cycles between companies and their customers, and move markets,” the CEO said. “We appreciate that our investors believe in our vision – even in this economy, we were able to raise significant capital at a substantial premium over the round we completed just a year ago.”

DataStax said it will use the funds from today’s round to double down on Astra DB’s development and tighten its integration with Astra Streaming.

Image: DataStax