Aug 5, 2021
Welcome to the world of Everyday AI: Why we’ve reinvested in Dataiku
From my very first encounter with Florian Douetteau, Dataiku’s Co-founder and CEO, I knew that he was building something special. We met more than four years ago, back when the company was raising its Series B round, and they were based in their old office on boulevard Poisonnière that could already barely fit the rapidly growing team of awesome Dataikers. I was immediately struck by Florian’s vision and passion. Here was someone redefining the data value chain.
We wrote about this when we participated in Dataiku’s $101m Series C in 2018 and, over the last few years, the mission has simply been realised: this is the company building enterprise AI — a modern toolkit that has now well and truly set the standard for how companies use their data. Dataiku democratises access to data and AI across an organisation, providing any company, in any industry, anywhere in the world with the keys to the engine room that powers truly systemic digital transformation. Here is how.
With Dataiku, a developer, a data scientist, a data engineer or a business analyst — anyone who needs to query and generate value from their data — can work and build from a single source of truth, whether they have extensive technical knowledge or not and, importantly, in a collaborative fashion. The company has now coined the term Everyday AI to capture this: if you want to predict the churn of customers, or know when you’ll need to proactively replace components across hundreds of machines, Dataiku is the foundation from which you deploy artificial intelligence tools to do exactly that. It syphons data into one place, in one format, organises and enriches it and enables it to be analysed and put into action — and for that process to be automated, intelligent and continuous.
Our investment thesis is premised on the notion that solving complex, real-world problems for business requires nailing data. And when we think about the future, we cannot imagine a world where there is less data. But we can imagine one where access to its power is scarce. For far too long, data has been reserved for the technical elites, parading “digital transformation” projects with limited impact. And that “data gap” is only likely to widen as the spectre of a global technical skills shortage continues to loom large. For most enterprises, recruiting specialised data science talent is extremely difficult. This means the task of deriving valuable insights from data often falls to less technical employees, who are left to struggle with a near-impossible task. Whatsmore, they are siloed in distinct parts of the organisations, many working (semi-)remotely, trying to piece together bits of information scattered across what are often very large businesses. Dataiku breaks the silos and empowers every person in the business, making all decisions data driven and every change wide and lasting. It isn’t just built to plug a gap; it’s making business around the world faster, smarter, and more productive.
And we’re thrilled to see their achievements recognised through a $400m Series E round, at a $4.6bn valuation. This will enable Dataiku’s visionary team — now 750 strong across 18 countries — to continue affirming its market leadership and adding to some 450 customers — from Walmart, GE and Schlumberger, to Engine and Pfizer — that it already serves.
This round is led by Tiger Global. Alongside other existing investors, including ICONIQ Growth, CapitalG, Battery Ventures, FirstMark and Snowflake, we’re excited to work with new investors and old friends like Insight Partners, Lightrock and Olivier Pomel, CEO of Datadog.
Dataiku’s accomplishments are a testament to Florian and his team’s impressive ability to maintain an excellent culture and shared focus at scale. We have unflagging confidence in both the business and in the market it is shaping. Already a global success story, Dataiku is on track to be a true software heavyweight, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds. If you would like to join their exciting journey, check out open positions here.
As one of our earliest data investments (along with fellow unicorn Collibra), Dataiku has played a pivotal role in defining and shaping this fundamental theme of our portfolio, which now has grown into a fully-fledged data ecosystem, with businesses like Quantexa (which uses AI to put every data point into context), Harbr (a data exchange that turns it into a product) and Firebolt (the next gen data warehouse making analytics lightning-fast). Here is how we think about the world of data and our growing Data Family:
