DataTorrent, Stream Processing Startup, Folds

DataTorrent, the startup behind the Apache Apex stream processing engine, unexpectedly closed its doors last week.

Guy Churchward, DataTorrent’s president and CEO since February 2017, confirmed the shutdown in a reply to a customer on Twitter.

“Unfortunately, we closed DataTorrent doors last week,” Churchward tweeted on Monday (May 7). “The bulk of the code can be obtained with Apache Apex….”

Churchward added that the “market wasn’t favorable for us to monetize an [intellectual property] track.” Despite the promise of Apache Apex, Churchward said the company concluded that the “market is leaning to free+support.”

A DataTorrent employee confirmed on Tuesday (May 8) that the company would cease operations by the end of May.

As recently as February, the startup founded in 2012 was promoting the latest version of its RTS (real-time streaming) platform that included a new framework called Apoxi that Churchward described in an interview was “application glue.”

According to the web site Crunchbase, the San Jose-based startup had raised $23.9 million in three funding rounds. Churchward took over as CEO last year from DataTorrent co-founder Phu Hoang.

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