Graph points towards $18.5m for Dato

Dato, a data spin-out of Carnegie Mellon University, has secured $18.5m in a series B round.

The round was led by Vulcan Capital, and joined by new investor Opus Capital Ventures as well as existing backers New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Madrona Venture Group. Both Madrona and NEA took place in Dato’s $6.75m series A in 2013. In total, the firm has now raised $25.25m.

The Seattle-based firm, formerly known as GraphLab, has developed from an open source project into a graph-based distribution computation network, which can be deployed in machine learning, data-mining, and computing tasks. The latest funding comes just after the firm released its first commercial product, GraphLab Create.

Carlos Guestrin, CEO of Dato, said: “Our company was founded on a mission to create a more intelligent world. The investments made in Dato will help us empower many more data scientists, software developers and engineers to revolutionise industries and enhance our lives in ways we can’t imagine. We are delivering a complete environment that makes data science and its benefits accessible to every business.”