Nextdata is a company that creates data meshes for businesses

Data meshes have been discussed for some time. Data can be accessed without first being moved to a data lake, which is a large-scale central repository, or a data warehouse, which is an enterprise system used for analyzing data from a variety of sources.

Big names in the industry like Databricks and Snowflake both offer data mesh products. However, not every one of them is the same. At least, that’s what Nextdata founder Zhamak Dehghani claims in an interview about his company’s plans to create a “data-mesh-native” platform for the creation and distribution of “data products.”

For one, businesses selling data aggregation platforms like Nextdata are attracting the interest of venture capitalists. Dehghani says the money will be used to build out Nextdata’s tooling and increase headcount across the company’s product, engineering, and go-to-market departments. The $12 million seed investment was led by Greycroft and Acrew Capital.

According to Dehghani, she created Nextdata to address the difficulties associated with data sharing for the purposes of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Dehghani told in an email interview, “Today, IT leaders must choose between speed of data-driven innovation at the expense of safety and security; or slow data-driven innovation with security.” Since most companies’ data management technology still doesn’t permit the sharing of trusted data necessary for AI, “the hype around AI isn’t rooted in reality for most enterprises today.”

In her previous role as director of emerging technology at ThoughtWorks, Dehghani popularized the data mesh among the company’s enterprise clients.

Dehghani’s experience at ThoughtWorks prompted her to develop Nextdata OS, a data mesh system that facilitates the development, distribution, exploration, and utilization of data products for analytical purposes. Through ThoughtWorks, users can manage and build data and metadata into apps, websites, and services using a unified container called the data product container.

All of Nextdata’s data product containers come with data governance policies “embedded as code.” Dehghani claims that these safeguards are implemented all through the lifecycle of the data product, from development to operation, including during storage, retrieval, and analysis.

She went on to say that “Nextdata is to data what containers and web APIs are to software.” To enable organizations to run analytical and machine-learning workloads “distributively,” the platform provides APIs that act as an open standard for accessing data products across technological and trust boundaries. Nextdata APIs bring processing to data so that data consumers don’t have to, thereby reducing data bloat and saving time.

According to Nextdata, its early access program already has “thousands” of users, including pilots with Fortune 100 companies. The startup currently has a team of around 10 people (4 contractors and 6 full-time employees), and its immediate priority is to grow that team.

“With the immense hype around AI, there has never been more urgency for organizations to rethink their data systems to simplify the process of sharing, connecting, and discovering enterprise data for analytics and AI in a decentralized and scalable fashion,” Dehghani said. To “responsibly unlock data for all,” “we’re building a team of visionaries and problem solvers to lead the movement.”