TileDB, a startup headquartered in Cambridge that aims to simplify data management across industries, has brought in $15 million in Series A funding.
The round was led by Two Bear Capital, with participation from new investor Uncorrelated Ventures and existing investors, Nexus Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Big Pi Ventures.
TileDB has been operational since May 2017, when its CEO and founder Stavros Papadopoulos spun the technology out of MIT and Intel Labs, where he was working as a research scientist. Papadopoulos focused his research on a "36,000-foot view" of what had transpired in the data management space since about 2010—essentially, new types of data had created an infrastructural mess.
"The problem is that in the course of all those years, the data landscape changed, and the computer landscape changed," Papadopoulos said. "Before, the database did everything. You didn't have to worry about much. Now, the data is not just tables anymore. You have genomics. You have videos. You have images. And you still need access control and auditing."
Papadopoulos created a novel solution: a "universal data engine" that can manage all different kinds of data. It is this technology that became the foundation of TileDB. With initial investment from Intel Capital, which allowed Papadopolous to continue his relationship with Intel without keeping the technology inside Intel Labs, TileDB has since grown to a team of 12 people.
The team is entirely remote—it has been since well before the coronavirus pandemic, Papadopolous clarified—but the startup is headquartered in Cambridge with an R&D-focused subsidiary in Greece.
TileDB offers two products: TileDB Embedded, an open-source, cloud-native and interoperable storage library for multi-dimensional arrays and TileDB Cloud, a serverless SaaS solution for sharing data and code and enabling efficient computations. TileDB Embedded is available on Github, and TileDB Cloud is currently offering free credits on sign-up.
With the new funding, TileDB will not only build out its technology but begin developing a go-to-market strategy in earnest. TileDB already counts several high-profile organizations, including the Chan Zuckerberg Institute, among its clientele, but it has relied almost entirely on word of mouth to gain new customers.
"Part of [our strategy going forward] is the actual technical evangelism of TileDB," Papadopolous said. "We were fortunate enough to have adoption without us saying anything out there."
Now, he said, TileDB plans to engage with more conferences and hackathons, as well as build out a content arm with blogs and videos on database management. That means TileDB will be hiring for marketing and sales roles, as well as engineering ones, with the goal of increasing the startup's headcount to 40 by this time next year.
"The Boston community does have such a data presence," said Seema Sheth-Voss, TileDB's head of marketing. "We're tech-first, and we're proud of it as a culture. That's what attracted me, and I think that's what's going to attract a lot of people as we build the organization."
Correction: This article previously stated that the Broad Institute is a customer of TileDB. This is inaccurate. Rather, Broad was an Intel collaborator while Papadopoulos was working there. We regret the error.
