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DevOps has changed the game in the way developers build, deploy, update, and monitor applications on their network. Now, an eponymous startup called DataOps.live, which has created a DataOps platform based on DevOps learnings, but aimed at the world of data science, is announcing a funding round following high demand for its services.
The London startup has raised $17.5 million from new backer Notion Capital, as well as previous investors Anthos Capital and Snowflake, the data cloud computing giant.
Snowflake is very much a strategic investor here: DataOps.live was built to work specifically with data hosted with Snowflake. The plan is to use some of this latest funding to continue to develop improvements to that service, but also to invest in working with unstructured data and with other data storage providers, according to Nick Halsey, the chief operating officer of the New York-based startup. USA
“This is a hot market segment right now. We drive the AI applications that everyone is striving to implement,” Halsey said. “Snowflake is the best at what he does. Right now we only work with structured data, but we will be expanding to other cloud data platforms.”
At a time when funding cycles are lengthening for many start-ups, due in part to the ongoing challenges of raising money at favorable valuations, and in some cases raising money at all, it’s remarkable that only 15 months have passed since DataOps. The live team raised their seed round of $10 million.
The interest in the company and the need for more funding is partly due to how it has been growing. DataOps.live’s revenue run rate increased by 400% in the last fiscal year. And the startup says that more than 1 million pipelines were executed last year, more than 10 million jobs were orchestrated, and 50 million data tests were performed. He projects to surpass all those figures this year.
The issues that DataOps.live addresses are common in the world of data analytics: working with data in multiple containers and other locations can lead to slower development times, backlogs, and version control issues—all issues that worsen and become more complex. as data pipelines grow (and they all are growing). The argument that DataOps.live makes is that its platform can help reduce the costs of managing and working with data by 30% by automating repetitive tasks and providing more insight into how data moves to improve efficiency and security.
Co-founders Justin Mullen and Guy Adams can boast of being pioneers and even pioneers in the field of DataOps. Software developers by training, they created an early version of the startup platform when they worked at a professional services company called Datalytyx, to create a better framework for how they handled these issues for their clients.
The work they did was partly the coding, of the platform itself, and partly the formalization of the methodology, inspired by the work in DevOps. They went on to establish a community called TrueDataOps; they co-wrote a book (with others) called DataOps for Dummies; and founded the startup announcing the funding today. (Datalytyx was eventually acquired by Mphasis, and the closing of that deal appears to have coincided with the launch of DataOps.live.)
Startups have continued to see great business traction at a time when funding for more consumer-focused companies feels a bit sluggish. Notion’s interest in the enterprise stems in part from that, but also from the growing need for better tools for those who work with data. The DataOps platform market is estimated to be worth about $3.9 billion today, growing to $10.9 billion by 2028, and is also growing as a competitive field, with AWS, Alteryx, dbt, and many others also in the same space.
“Today, data is the lifeblood of business, but managing and scaling data operations can be a daunting task. Data needs can grow faster than operations teams can process, leading to slow or one-time development efforts,” Stephanie Opdam, a principal at Notion Capital, said in a statement. “DataOps.live at the forefront of a movement that enables enterprises to improve data quality, streamline many data processes simultaneously, and accelerate product development. DataOps.live has a fantastic and growing team, a great product, and impressive traction. We believe it has the potential to become the next category leader.”
And given how competitive the data warehousing market is, Snowflake’s interest will most likely give it a closer relationship with a player in the DataOps space that has already proven to be tightly integrated with its platform.
“DataOps.live enables organizations to build, test, and deploy Snowflake products and applications, just as they do software applications. They increase the speed of development and accelerate adoption, while maintaining governance and security,” Stefan Williams, head of corporate development and Snowflake Ventures, said when the startup announced its seed. “By expanding our partnership with DataOps.live, we offer joint customers the ability to collaborate confidently within their organizations and beyond. We look forward to supporting the DataOps.live team in the next stages of their growth.”
