Aiven, a Finnish startup whose U.S. headquarters is in Boston, has raised $40 million in a Series B round. The company's goal is to combine open-source technologies with cloud infrastructure.
The round was led by Silicon Valley-based IVP, with participation from existing investors Earlybird VC and Lifeline Ventures, as well as the family offices of Risto Siilasmaa and Olivier Pomel. As part of the transaction, IVP general partner Eric Liaw will join Aiven's board of directors.
Aiven plans to use some of the new funding to expand its presence in Beantown. Nearly 100 new employees will be hired in the U.S., first in Boston and then expanding to other locations, starting with San Francisco, a spokesperson said in an email. The team has not yet decided how many employees will be hired specifically in Boston.
At the moment, Aiven employs 50 people worldwide. Four of those are in Boston, operating out of the WeWork at 1 Lincoln St.; the company plans to upgrade to a larger space soon.
"Boston's a big tech hub in the East Coast, and we wanted to focus first on the East Coast to make it easier to work with our European HQ," Aiven's CEO and co-founder Oskari Saarenmaa said in an email to BostInno.
Worldwide, Aiven plans to triple headcount, add new open-source technologies to its platform and introduce new enterprise-grade features, according to a statement.
"This investment is evidence of a growing appetite from enterprises for open-source data technologies," Saarenmaa said in the statement. "Aiven is able to close that gap by offering a platform that abstracts away all the complexities of operating those technologies so our customers can focus on their business applications and driving the bottom line."
Last year, the company tripled its revenue run rate, added 200 new customers, doubled headcount and opened two new offices in Berlin and Sydney, according to the statement.
Aiven is currently hiring a customer support engineer, a solutions architect and a developer advocate in Boston.
