Alation Raises $123M Series E to Meet Surging Global Demand for Data Intelligence Platforms

• Financing round led by Thoma Bravo, Sanabil Investments, and Costanoa Ventures with participation from Databricks Ventures, a new strategic investor

• Funding follows five consecutive quarters of accelerated annual growth, including recently surpassing $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR)

Redwood City, Calif. – November 2, 2022 – Alation Inc., the leader in enterprise data intelligence solutions, today announced it has raised $123 million in a Series E financing led by Thoma Bravo, Sanabil Investments, and Costanoa Ventures, with participation from new investor, Databricks Ventures. Existing and other investors that also participated include Dell Technologies Capital, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Icon Ventures, Queensland Investment Corporation, Riverwood Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and Union Grove. Total funding raised stands at $340 million, elevating the company’s current valuation to more than $1.7 billion amid the volatile late-stage software-as-a-service (SaaS) growth equity market.

The raised capital will accelerate Alation’s growth and global expansion, while driving strategic product innovation as the demand for data intelligence platforms surges. According to IDC, the data integration and intelligence software market is valued at more than $7.9 billion and growing toward $11.6 billion over the next four years. Organizations collect massive amounts of data to track and understand buyer behavior, and to manage supply chains, inventory, sales, customer service, and more. To transform that raw data into actionable insights, enterprises need a data intelligence platform to find, understand, trust, and use data collaboratively. Alation solves this problem for nearly 450 enterprise customers today, including AbbVie, Cisco, Munich Re, NASDAQ, Pfizer, Raiffeisen Bank, Salesforce, The Very Group, Vattenfall, Virgin Australia, and more.

Thoma Bravo, a leading software investment firm, has an extensive history of partnering with its portfolio companies to provide operational insights and support that drive sustainable long-term growth.

As one of the fastest-growing data companies at scale in the world, Alation joins Thoma Bravo’s portfolio of industry-leading software and technology companies. Data-centric technologies are core to Thoma Bravo’s focus as a software investor, and the firm provides both operational expertise and a strategic perspective to help companies achieve their product vision. As a long-standing investor in software, Thoma Bravo owns some of the largest business intelligence (BI) franchises in Qlik; extract, transform, and load (ETL) companies in Talend; and data platforms in Starburst and Imply. Thoma Bravo also has extensive experience with the data intelligence market with prior investments like Embarcadero Technologies (metadata management) and Infogix (data quality and data governance).

“As companies continue their digital transformations, capturing and interpreting high-quality data is critical for decision-making and delivering stakeholder value,” said Robert (Tre) Sayle, a Partner at Thoma Bravo. “Data intelligence is a high-growth market and Satyen and his talented team have built a leading platform trusted by enterprises worldwide. We’re excited to lead Alation’s Series E round and support the company as it continues its impressive business growth, product innovation, and market leadership.”

The financing will further bolster Alation’s leadership position in the market and drive:

• Increased product-focused research and development, as well as acquisitions, to expand Alation’s multi-tenant SaaS offering

• Innovative new product offerings to support its growing customer base of nearly 450 enterprises, which includes more than 25% of Fortune 100 companies

• Expansion of Alation’s global workforce, which has grown by 75% in less than 12 months and currently boasts more than 700 employees globally across the US, EMEA, and APAC

• The richest and most satisfying customer experience in the market through additional support representatives, engineers, and deployment professionals that will allow customers to take advantage of their data assets immediately and leverage Alation’s innovation

“We raised $123 million because we wanted to continue to invest and give our customers the world-class data intelligence experience they deserve,” said Satyen Sangani, CEO and co-founder, Alation. “The confidence from our investors reinforces that Alation is the leading data intelligence platform and we are well positioned to capitalize on opportunities in our expanding market.”

He continued, “The modern enterprise needs data in good times … and even more so in bad. With a challenging economic outlook, companies are looking to their data for direction, to drive operational efficiencies, and gain or maintain a competitive advantage. Alation makes that happen consistently with clients increasing their spend year-over-year. Our calling cards are consistent ROI, engagement, and adoption. This latest funding round will help us go even faster, so more organizations can harness the power of their data and convert this wealth of information into usable, trusted insights.”

“Alation is a category leader serving secular trends of cloud data migration and data governance, which is a powerful positioning under uncertain macroeconomic conditions,” commented a spokesperson of Sanabil Investments. “Sanabil is proud to support a high-quality company with a best-in-class team, product offering, and execution capabilities. By serving nearly 450 enterprise customers and generating $100+ million in ARR, Alation has demonstrated its ability to scale and drive the adoption of data culture across industries. We are excited to co-lead Alation’s Series E round alongside Thoma Bravo and Costanoa, showing the confidence investors have in Alation’s ability to build on its success as a leader in data intelligence.”

“We knew Alation had extraordinary promise the moment we saw it,” said Greg Sands, Founder and Managing Director, Costanoa Ventures. “For enterprises to make high-quality, data-driven decisions, every business user needs to be able to find, understand, and trust the right data. We are proud to co-lead this funding round alongside Thoma Bravo and Sanabil, and support Alation as it drives the evolution of data intelligence.”

The new strategic investment from Databricks Ventures will significantly expand the partnership and value proposition for Databricks and Alation’s 100+ joint customers. In addition to the investment, the two companies will accelerate joint go-to-market initiatives that benefit from the deep product integrations with Delta Lake and Unity Catalog to deliver trusted data discovery, governance, and end-to-end lineage experiences that power data engineering, data science, and analytics use cases on Databricks’ Lakehouse Platform. The investment builds on the longstanding partnership between the two companies.

“We are excited to invest in and deepen our longtime partnership with Alation,” said Andrew Ferguson, VP, Corporate Development & Ventures, Databricks. “Now more than ever, an organization’s data is one of its most critical assets. With Alation, data teams have a stronger understanding of the trusted data in their lakehouse that can be used to drive business value through analytics and AI/ML.”

Today’s announcement follows a key business milestone: Alation surpassed $100 million in ARR in September 2022. The company’s growth and latest funding round collectively speak to the greater market understanding that data intelligence platforms are a necessity and that modern enterprises cannot rely on multiple-point solutions to find, understand, and govern data in order to drive their businesses forward.

Supporting quotes: “Effectively harnessing data can ultimately support the long-term viability of an organization,” said Steward Bond, Vice President of Data Intelligence and Data Integration Software, IDC. “However, the modern data environment is highly variable and complex – without the ability to scan and index metadata, using data to solve complex problems and build value for customers and stakeholders is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. This is the core problem Alation solves, simplifying the search and discovery of quality data so people can understand and use it confidently. Alation is truly a powerful asset for the modern enterprise looking to drive ROI from data.”

“Alation has transformed how we find and use data across our organization to drive strategic business decisions and power analytics needs,” said Wendy Batchelder, SVP of Global Data Governance & Chief Data Officer of Trust at Salesforce. “Since adopting Alation, we’ve broken down legacy data silos, enabled analysts to easily find the data they need, and improved our approach to data governance. We continue to onboard more and more users, empowering teams to work faster and be more productive.”

“Organizations are becoming more reliant on metadata, which helps them effectively analyze and put their data to use,” said Paul Glaser, Vice President and Head of Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, HPE. “Alation enables our customers to extract real value from their relevant business datasets, helping our customers operate efficiently in today’s data-rich enterprise environment. We’re proud to support Alation’s growth to better help our customers find, analyze, and use their data.”

Learn More:

• Visit our blog, Why Invest Now? Three Investors Share the Story Behind Alation’s Series E

• Join Alation’s growing team

About Thoma Bravo Thoma Bravo is one of the largest private equity firms in the world, with more than $122 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2022. The firm invests in growth-oriented, innovative companies operating in the software and technology sectors. Leveraging the firm’s deep sector expertise and proven strategic and operational capabilities, Thoma Bravo collaborates with its portfolio companies to implement operating best practices, drive growth initiatives and make accretive acquisitions intended to accelerate revenue and earnings. Over the past 20 years, the firm has acquired or invested in more than 400 companies representing over $220 billion in enterprise value. The firm has offices in Chicago, Miami, and San Francisco. For more information, visit www.thomabravo.com.

About Sanabil Investments Sanabil is a financial investment company that commits approximately $2 billion in capital per annum into private investments that include venture capital, growth, and small buyouts. Since our 2009 inception with $8 billion in paid-up capital, we have seen firsthand how bold ideas can disrupt traditional business models; ideas that enable new and improved ways of producing, consuming, and experiencing things. We choose to partner with the architects of these ideas. We are a dynamic, nimble, and highly experienced team of investment professionals that provides partners with patient capital, the ability to invest across multiple funding rounds, and access to the GCC investment ecosystem. At Sanabil, we identify, invest in, and transform groundbreaking ideas into tangible realities.

About Costanoa Ventures Founded in 2012, Costanoa Ventures partners with technical and product founders as early as company formation, with a focus on apps and infrastructure in data, dev, and fintech. Costanoa is a long-term partner to entrepreneurs who want hands-on help in their earliest company stages on all things go-to-market and talent. For more information, please visit www.costanoavc.com.

About Databricks Ventures Databricks Ventures is the strategic investment arm of Databricks, the lakehouse company. Databricks Ventures invests in innovative companies that align with our view of the future for data, analytics and AI; and are committed to extending the lakehouse ecosystem or using the lakehouse architecture to create the next generation of data and AI-powered companies.

1. IDC, Worldwide Data Integration and Intelligence Software Forecast, 2022–2026, US47920222, May 2022