US-based search engine technology developer Maana emerged from stealth yesterday with more than $14m of funding, mainly supplied by various corporate venturing units.
Maana’s investors are energy companies Chevron and ConocoPhillips, industrial conglomerate General Electric and semiconductor maker Intel, which invested through subsidiaries Chevron Technology Ventures, ConocoPhillips Technology Ventures, GE Ventures and Intel Capital, as well as venture capital firm Frost Data Capital.
The company’s search and discovery platform is being developed for use in big data, and it will use the funding to expand its capacity in order to meet growing demand from corporate customers.
Maana raised $3m in seed funding and recently closed an oversubscribed $11m series A round, but has not disclosed which investors participated in each round.
Brett May, head of venture capital and M&A for GE Software, said: “The industrial internet is the next big opportunity for entrepreneurs and developers to drive rapid innovation and industry transformation.
“Between the connectivity brought by the industrial internet and creation of industrial time series data that needs to be analysed, Maana’s technology has the potential to solve the problem of ‘big data search,’ particularly for industrial data, which is very different from consumer data.”