The $740m investment in US-based software company Cloudera by semiconductor company Intel’s corporate venturing unit, Intel Capital, was the single largest data centre investment in Intel’s history.
Cloudera secured this year’s award following the news in March 2014 that it had closed an enormous $900m series F round backed by Intel Capital and Google unit Google Ventures. Other investors in theround included T Rowe Price and an affiliate of MSD Capital, and it brought the company’s total funding to date to more than $1bn.
The round was particularly defined by Intel, which, as part of a wider strategic partnership, paid $740m for an 18% stake in the data management hub developer.
Cloudera has created a big data management platform for businesses using open-source Apache Hadoop software that enables users to store, process and analyse data to help them increase value from their investments, and we are likely to see more startups in big data being backed by strategic investors, including corporate venturing units.
Diane Bryant, senior vice-president and general manager of Intel’s data centre group, said: “By aligning the Cloudera and Intel roadmaps, we are creating the platform of choice for big data analytics. We expect to accelerate industry adoption of the Hadoop data platform and enable companies to mine their data for insights that inform the business. This collaboration spans our data centre technology from computer to network, security and storage, and extends to our initiatives for the internet of things.”
Weeks before the Intel funding, Cloudera had secured $160m, from Google Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the US technology company, among others, and reports at the time suggested Intel was interested in investing a smaller amount that would have brought the round to $200m.
Karim Faris, general partner at Google Ventures, said: “We see broad demand from enterprises that want a flexible approach to handling large amounts of data, and we expect this market to continue to grow rapidly. Cloudera is dramatically lowering the cost of reliable storage for the enterprise and is enabling the analysis and mining of large data sets in a way that was not possible before.”
Investment firm T Rowe Price led the earlier part of the round, with participation from an affiliate of MSD Capital, Michael Dell’s private investment firm.
Previous investors in Cloudera include In-Q-Tel, the venturing unit representing the US intelligence community, which invested in both Cloudera’s $40m series D round in 2011 and its $65m series E round in 2012, as well as venture capital firms Meritech Capital Partners, Ignition Partners, Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and SV Angel.
The company plans to use the funding to support a previously-announced partnership with Intel, to further the adoption of Hadoop by businesses while promoting the enterprise data hub market, and to utilise Intel’s worldwide presence to expand into Europe, China and the rest of Asia.
“The market opportunity for companies to gain insight and build transformative applications based on Hadoop is tremendous,” said Cloudera chief executive Tom Reilly.
“Clearly, demand is accelerating and the market is poised for growth. This position of strength and leadership is evidenced by the strong support of public market investors, large institutional investors and now key strategic investors, including Intel, who have made sizeable and significant contributions to cement our platform offering.”
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