Investors are bullish for Big Data
There is also clear appetite for large, later stage rounds, with recent examples include Mongo DB, which raised a 150m USD Series F funding, and Palantir, which raised 308m USD in 2013 alone. Consequently, there are several US start-ups which have now received over 100m USD in funding. Interestingly, these companies span different ways to play the Big Data Analytics theme, including pure services (Mu Sigma and Opera Solutions), software/services (Palantir, Cloudera), infrastructure software (Mongo DB), and pure Analytics software (APT). Some of the world’s leading funds have been the most active investors in Big Data Analytics companies. Notable among the most active investors include Accel Partners which has launched a 100m USD fund dedicated to data-driven software and In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA. In addition to Venture Capitalists and Growth Equity funds, a number of Private Equity firms have also invested in the sector. Applied Predictive Technologies (APT) is backed by Accel-KKR and secured a 100m USD minority investment from the Merchant Banking Division of Goldman Sachs.
Conclusion
Business Intelligence software has been a hotbed of acquisition activity for almost twenty years, with over 100 acquisitions made since the mid-90s by the market’s key consolidators, and IBM, Oracle and SAP each having made over 30 acquisitions in this market. The market is entering a new phase of consolidation as major Business Intelligence vendors seek to acquire complementary Big Data Analytics capabilities. In the eight month period from July 2010 to March 2011, four Big Data companies – Greenplum, Netezza, Vertica Systems and Aster Data Systems – were acquired by EMC, IBM, HP and Teradata respectively for a combined 2.6bn USD. The four companies received total venture funding of 218m USD, highlighting the opportunity for significant financial returns in the sector. With several Big Data Analytics companies now reaching high levels of funding and growth, we believe it will be a matter of time before the largest are acquired by the major vendors such as SAP, IBM and Oracle.
