Funding boost for data analysis startup
The sky is the limit for Greek-owned startup TileDB, whose data analysis formula has grabbed the attention of numerous investors, leading to a very successful funding round that has raised up to $4 million, Kathimerini can reveal.
“I want the company to become a new Oracle – i.e. to reach the size of large high-tech companies and travel a similar path. My goals are long-term, not limited to an acquisition but to building a company of this size,” says creator Stavros Papadopoulos. While he was a researcher at MIT and Intel he conceived the idea of developing a system for managing even highly complex data (genetic data, satellite images, videos, time series), which traditional databases are unable to process.
“All companies and organizations produce a large amount of data, which they want to process quickly to make critical decisions or even make scientific discoveries. Our platform can process complex and different types of data, which traditional databases cannot,” Papadopoulos explains.
“It essentially brings all this data together into one system, giving businesses the ability to analyze and process it quickly, without unnecessary costs,” he says. “Such technology contributes, for example, to the acceleration of drug discovery and production, the rapid collection and analysis of data for the construction of fighter aircraft etc. Hospitals also use our technology to detect if a newborn has a genetic disease. Six years ago we started a colossal, almost impossible undertaking, but now we can say that it is starting to become a reality,” he says.
These prospects seem to have been recognized by popular investors who recently decided to grant new capital to the startup. Kathimerini can reveal that TileDB, based in Boston and with offices in Greece, has raised $3-4 million from investors such as AlleyCorp of founder and CEO Kevin Ryan, creator of Nasdaq-listed MongoDB and investor in Blueground, Lockheed Martin and Intel Capital.
Among the participants in the financing round are biotechnology company Amgen, Nexus Venture Partners, telecom giant Verizon as well as Greek investment fund Big Pi Ventures, known for its investment in the Greek startup Accusonus, which was acquired by Facebook. “Big Pi has been by our side since the early days of the company. Marco Veremis and Nikos Kalliagopoulos contributed significantly to its development,” Papadopoulos says.