Dataiku, an AI and analytics platform, raises $200 million at a lower price

The most recent well-funded business to experience macroeconomic difficulties is Dataiku, which raised fresh funding at a substantially lower valuation. In a Series F round led by Wellington Management, the firm raised $200 million today, valuing the company at $3.7 billion as opposed to Dataiku’s $4.6 billion estimate from August 2021.

Dataiku aims to conclude its Series F with up to $275 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. With the $200 million from Wellington, the startup with headquarters in New York has raised around $600 million in total.

“Dataiku’s proven track record, management team, growth trajectory, and customer roster, position the company to expand AI to new heights,” said Matt Withelier of Wellington Management in a statement. We are honored to work with them and support their remarkable journey. Dataiku has assumed a leadership role in assisting businesses in putting huge datasets to use at previously unheard-of speeds and developing an AI culture centered on generating compounding economic results.

The hiccup on the road surprises me somewhat. Contrary to rivals like DataRobot, Dataiku, which sells tools to help customers design, test, and deploy AI and analytics applications, has avoided making significant layoffs. Additionally, earlier this year, Dataiku sent a message to investors that it had no plans to change the direction of its growth strategy by disclosing for the first time its annual recurring revenue ($150 million) and by appointing a new chief financial officer, the first person from outside the company to join its C-suite.

The appointment of Adam Towns as the company’s CFO sparked rumors that Dataiku was planning to go public soon; Towns had previously assisted Mimecast in going public. However, the Series F statement indicates that a listing may not happen for some time.

There are indications that VC funding for AI firms is declining. According to a recent PitchBook report, overall investments totaled $20.2 billion across 1,340 deals in Q2 2022, a decrease of 27.8% quarter over quarter in deal value increase for AI startups. VCs have invested $48.2 billion in AI firms so far this year across more than 3,000 deals, which may sound solid but really marks a 20.9% decline from last year.

According to a press release, Dataiku currently has more than 500 clients, including more than 150 of the largest corporations in the world. According to Florian Douetteau, co-founder and CEO of Dataiku, they are using the platform for use cases like predictive maintenance, supply chain optimization, quality control in engineering, and marketing optimization.

In a statement, Douetteau added that businesses “overwhelmingly recognize that now is the moment to adopt AI – or risk falling behind.” “The strength of our solutions, the caliber of our team, and the enormous potential ahead are underscored by our ability to attract additional, market-leading investors, like Wellington, in this difficult environment. We are prepared to face the moment as the market is about to undergo a tremendous transformation with AI at its core.

The AI and big data analytics market is dominated by a number of startups, including Dataiku, which debuted in Paris in 2013. The more formidable competitors are DataRobot, which raised $300 at a $6.3 billion value in July 2021, and Databricks, which raised $1.6 billion in August 2021.

In recent years, Dataiku has introduced a fully managed variant of their data science platform called Dataiku Online in an effort to increase the number of startups and small- and medium-sized businesses that use it. Additionally, Dataiku has released new tools that enable businesses to create and deploy analytics and AI applications, transform unstructured data into advanced analytics, and create machine learning models for use in their own software and services.