Birst Announces $65M Investment Round

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 17 — Birst, the global leader in Cloud BI and Analytics, today announced $65 million in funding that will further drive the company’s impressive growth and customer success. Wellington Management Company LLP led the investment round and was joined by all existing investors including Sequoia Capital, Hummer Winblad, DAG Ventures and Northgate Capital.

With this investment Birst has raised a total of $156 million, solidifying the company’s continued success and leadership as the pioneer in the Cloud BI landscape. Birst will use the new funding to continue to strengthen its international presence, drive sales and marketing, and invest in enhanced product capabilities.

“The BI market is going through a major transition as the legacy suppliers continue to decline. The race for next-generation leadership in BI and analytics is going to be won by the supplier that offers world-class technology, great business leadership, and a proven capability to focus on today’s needs versus those from a decade ago,” said Doug Leone, partner at Sequoia Capital.  “Birst is the clear leader among the new companies trying to disrupt and own this huge BI market.”

Birst’s revolutionary 2-tier approach provides a single source of all operational data across an organization and supports both the needs of business users and IT with a single cloud platform. Its unique architecture delivers robust BI capabilities along with a “consumer-grade” ease of use and the self-service agility of desktop tools.

“We’ve seen an explosion in data volumes, data sources, and end-user demand in the analytics market. Organizations need speed, end-user self-service and robust data governance from their next-generation business intelligence platform. That’s exactly what we deliver at Birst,” said Jay Larson, CEO, Birst. “Birst is the only company that provides a BI platform with the capability of the legacy providers as well as the speed and agility of desktop discovery products. Our unique two-tier data architecture provides a unified approach to BI, unifying enterprise data from across the company and delivering it to business users with the consistency and security that IT demands. So IT is happy with our approach. And business users benefit from world-class analytical tools and company-wide data access that gives them the ability to self-serve without having to rely on IT to meet their BI needs. Business users love this freedom. Only Birst unifies enterprise data, brings together centralized and decentralized approaches to BI, and allows IT and the business user to work together harmoniously. Birst is a breakthrough BI platform that changes the game in the BI industry.”

Birst continues to grow its international presence with the acquisition of world-class customers in Asia, Europe and North America, providing proximity, security and high performance to global customers. Birst was built using cutting-edge technologies that leverage innovations from Google, Facebook and other next-generation companies, uniquely allowing it to scale while delivering consumer-grade experience. Its strong executive team of technology veterans ensures continued growth and innovation, and its numerous industry accolades are evidence of its leadership in Cloud BI. Birst was most recently named a ‘Challenger’ in Gartner’s 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms report and recognized as one of The Channel Company’s CRN 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors of 2015.