Data cloud service provider Snowflake has invested $20 million in business analytics software developer ThoughtSpot in a move that expands on a technology alliance the two companies established nearly two years ago.
The companies announced Tuesday that Snowflake Ventures, Snowflake’s venture capital arm, has acquired an equity stake in Sunnyvale, Calif.-based ThoughtSpot with the $20 million strategic investment.
The size of Snowflake’s stake in privately held ThoughtSpot was not disclosed.
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“ThoughtSpot and Snowflake share a common vision of empowering organizations to unlock the power of their data and mobilize it in service of the enterprise,” said Christian Kleinerman, Snowflake senior vice president of product, in a statement. “This investment showcases our continued partnership with ThoughtSpot and commitment to helping our customers get better and faster insights while leveraging the power of the Snowflake Data Cloud.
ThoughtSpot previously raised $543.7 million, according to the Crunchbase website, including $248 million in Series E funding in August 2019. That round put ThoughtSpot’s valuation at $1.95 billion, the company said at the time.
Lightspeed Venture Partners is among the company’s biggest investors. Other investors include Silver Lake Waterman, Sapphire Ventures and Geodesic Capital.
ThoughtSpot develops search and AI-driven data analysis software and will use the new funding to accelerate its product development efforts, according to a company spokesman, especially as related to helping customers generate ROI from their cloud data management investments. The company also will expand its go-to-market activities with Snowflake and other cloud partners, the spokesman said.
ThoughtSpot has been one of the standouts in the crowded business intelligence and data analytics software arena in recent years. The company is generally seen as aiming to go public in the not-too-distant future.
Snowflake, of course, knows all about going public after the company’s own blockbuster IPO in September when the San Mateo, Calif.-based company raised $3.4 billion and achieved a market cap of more than $70 billion.
In June 2019 ThoughtSpot and Snowflake announced a partnership under which ThoughtSpot’s Embrace technology, which allowed businesses and organizations to run search and AI-based analytical workloads directly in existing databases, to work with the Snowflake platform. The two companies have continued to develop a substantial base of joint customers including Hulu, Capital One and Medtronic.
The two companies said the investment signaled their intent to deepen their alliance and validate the success they have enjoyed.
“We’re all racing to capture as much data as possible, but the reality is, data is useless unless we can quickly unearth insights and use them to create personalized experiences for customers. Doing so requires a completely new, modern approach. Snowflake is the creator of the data cloud, changing the entire industry in the same way Oracle did in the 90s and Salesforce did in the early 2000s,” said ThoughtSpot CEO Sudheesh Nair in a statement.
“Customers who embrace this new world will differentiate themselves on both the quality and agility they deliver to customers,” Nair said. “Doing so, however, requires a new kind of analytics that brings the power of the Data Cloud to everyone through the ease of a simple, yet powerful analytics platform. We couldn’t be more excited to join the Data Cloud revolution.”
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