Information technology group Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) bought the business assets of MapR Technologies, a US-based enterprise data software provider backed by internet technology conglomerate Alphabet and chipmaker Qualcomm, on Monday
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but a person privy to the deal told Forbes that HPE paid less than $50m, an amount that was also less than MapR’s annual revenue.
Founded in 2009, MapR has built a platform to manage structured and unstructured data for analytics and artificial intelligence applications. Its clients seemingly included networking equipment producer Cisco and electronics conglomerate Philips.
HPE expects to hire most of MapR’s 200 employees. MapR said in May 2019 that it was making 122 employees including chief executive John Schroeder redundant, and was planning to wind down after it failed to secure funding.
The corporate will take over MapR’s existing customer base and will continue to work with select partners. It will also integrate the technology into its own Intelligent Data Platform.
MapR had raised $280m in funding, most recently capturing $56m in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners in September 2017 that included unnamed existing backers. That funding followed failed plans in March the same year to go public.
Alphabet’s growth equity arm, CapitalG, had already joined Qualcomm’s corporate venturing unit, Qualcomm Ventures, in a $50m round in 2016 that was led by Australian sovereign wealth fund Future Fund at a reported valuation of more than $1bn.
Lightspeed, Mayfield Fund, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Redpoint Ventures also contributed to the 2016 round, which followed a $110m round in 2014 consisting of $80m of equity and $30m of debt financing.
CapitalG led the equity portion of the 2014 round, which also featured Qualcomm Ventures, Lightspeed, Mayfield, NEA and Redpoint, while Silicon Valley Bank led the debt facility.
