Our investment in Y42: the first scalable data platform that anyone can run

The history of data tooling is one of expansion and contraction. In the early days companies developed on-premise solutions that integrated information from multiple functions from across the business. With the adoption of the cloud data warehouse, we then saw an explosion in siloed  specialised cloud-based tools at the cost of the integration that defined the pre-cloud era. Today as companies seek to stitch together multiple deployments within a single system, history tells us that consolidation of these tools is coming sooner rather than later. 

That’s why we are pleased to announce that we have partnered with Hung Dang and the Y42 team to lead the Berlin-based company’s  $31M Series A funding round, together with Insight Partners. With a full data lifecycle approach, Y42 rethinks the siloed and expensive modern data stack from first principles. 

Y42 believes that the ability to effectively leverage data is not a technology problem – it’s a business problem. Every business leader knows that their firm needs to extract more value from data, but the modern data stack is both a blessing and a curse. Although it expands the toolkit for data teams, its complexity requires highly skilled, scarce talent. In a world where demand for data engineers grows by 50% annually, this pain point is getting exponentially more acute. As such many businesses that aspire to use data exist between management-by-spreadsheet and the expensive modern data stack. 

Here is where Y42 comes in: its platform can turn any company into a data business, and any person into a data analyst. Y42 is easy to run and enables users to independently implement a complete data platform, which can scale as the company grows – unlike either of the existing solutions. It lowers the barrier to entry to effective data usage by removing the need to maintain complex data infrastructure. With a tool that targets both the business intelligence teams with no-code functionality, as well as the more technical users in the data stack, Y42 aims to enable a seamless collaboration between these actors that isn’t possible today. 

We believe that Y42 can become the first choice for all companies starting to build their data stack. Any company large or small will be empowered to build, support and maintain a truly modern data stack without being hindered by talent scarcity. By delivering on the promise of a solution that grows as its users do, we think that Y42 is the company that will finally make business intelligence smart. 

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