The use of Hadoop-based open source big-data technology continues to grow among enterprises, and today MapR Technologies, one of the bigger startups in the space, has announced another $50 million in funding to secure its place as a leading vendor and gear up for an IPO. The investment is being led by Future Fund — Australia’s sovereign wealth fund — and also includes participation from MapR’s existing investors Google Capital (which led its last round of $110 million), Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, New Enterprise Associates, Qualcomm Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures.
MapR is not disclosing its valuation (we are asking around and will update when/if we learn what it might be). As some context, its last round valued the company at more than $1 billion. The company has now raised $194 million to date in equity, with another $30 million in debt financing.
The Hadoop market is largely a three-horse race between MapR, Cloudera and Hortonworks. Cloudera has to date raised over $1 billion; and while Hortonworks had a strong public listing debut in 2014, it has more recently been taking a hit after missing analysts’ estimates and reporting widening losses earlier this month (its market cap is currently around $435 million).
In that context, MapR — which also taps and converges data in Spark, among other technologies — is in a somewhat enviable position: the company is growing well while steering clear of some of the pressures that might come with larger a financing load or a public-company profile.
MapR describes its last quarter as a “record” for the company, with a 100 percent increase in bookings compared to a year ago, with licenses and support agreements (the mainstay of the company’s business model) accounting for 90 percent of total bookings. It also said it had “multiple” license transactions of $5 million or more, although it doesn’t spell out total revenues.
Its customer list includes a strong roster of large corporations — underscoring just how widely used Apache Hadoop-based big data services are becoming. They include American Express, Audi, Ericsson, JLL, Mizuho Bank, NTT, Philips, Qualcomm, and Rubicon Project.
“Our ongoing momentum is fueled by a world-class team that is driving innovation and growth across every facet of our organization,” said John Schroeder, MapR’s founder and CEO, in a statement. “This new funding strengthens our balance sheet as we look ahead to an initial public offering.”
On the subject of an IPO, the company has been making some noises already this year, although with no specific details on timing.
I’ve emailed MapR’s CEO to ask about how it came to tap Australia’s sovereign wealth fund for this latest funding round, and I will update as and when he or the company responds. More generally, the company opened offices in the country in 2014 to serve Australia and New Zealand, and it has been making moves to establish itself as a key partner for businesses opting to use Hadoop-based big data analytics as part of their operations.
“Enterprise computing is going through one of the biggest transformations in decades and companies that are serious about leveraging data as a disruptive advantage are relying on MapR,” said Barry Eggers, managing partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners, in a statement. “The company has consistently demonstrated strong growth over several years and we believe its technology lead will continue to drive its success.”
Source: TechCrunch
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