Big Data Analytics Startup Ocient Raises $40M In Early-Round Funding

The developer of a platform for processing and analyzing huge volumes of data will use the funding to hire across its engineering, customer support, and sales and marketing operations this year.

Big data analytics startup Ocient has raised $40 million in Series B funding, money the company will use to expand its operations and double its employee headcount by the end of 2021.

The investment round was led by OCA Ventures and Greycroft, Ocient said Monday, with participation by Valor Equity Partners, PSP Partners, Hyde Park Angels, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Gaingels, and the MIT and Northwestern University chapters of Alumni Venture Group.

The latest funding follows the $15 million the company raised in June 2020, in a round led by OCA Ventures and participation by In-Q-Tel, and $10 million it raised in 2018.

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Ocient said the additional capital will be applied to expanding the company’s engineering, customer support, operational, and sales and marketing teams: The company expects its headcount to double to 150 by the end of 2021.

Chicago-based Ocient, founded in 2016, develops data analytics software that’s designed to ingest, store and analyze massive volumes of structured data – tens of terabytes, multiple petabytes and even exabytes of data, according to the company.

“Organizations are struggling to keep up with today’s data demands, a challenge that will only continue to increase exponentially,” said Chris Gladwin, Ocient’s CEO and co-founder, in a statement. “With Ocient technology, organizations can tap into every piece of data now and in the future, unleashing massive new enterprise value.”

Chief Product Officer Joe Jablonski and Chief Architect George Kondiles are Ocient’s co-founders with Gladwin.

The company’s proprietary Ocient DAS (data analytics solutions) technology includes an “ultra-large-scale” relational database with trillions and even quadrillions of rows and columns. The system also includes analytics software written for specific use cases.

The system can be deployed on-premises or on a public cloud system or can be accessed through the Ocient Cloud service. The software runs on industry-standard hardware utilizing NVMe SSD, 100Gbps networks, and massively parallel processing on large core-count processors, according to the company.

Ocient said the company’s technology has already been implemented for a number of use cases including geospatial, security, and auction and exchange analysis tasks.