Madison data analytics software company DataChat Inc. has raised $25 million in Series A funding, according to a Tuesday announcement.
The round was led by Redline Capital Management, which has offices in London and Luxembourg's capital Luxembourg City, and Anthos Capital, which has locations in California and Seattle. The lead investors from DataChat's $4 million seed round — Celesta Capital (formerly WRVI Capital) and Nepenthe Capital — also contributed to the Series A round.
"The seed round allowed us to bring the initial product vision to market and to release it to a limited set of customers," DataChat CEO and co-founder Jignesh Patel said in a statement. "The reception has been a huge success, and the Series A round will allow us to accelerate (the) execution of both our product roadmap and our customer growth strategy."
As it builds its customer base, DataChat is targeting large, global companies with recognizable brands in the technology, retail, finance and consulting industries, Patel said.
Founded in 2017 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, DataChat's vision is to democratize data science to enable business professionals to gain insights from data without needing coding skills. The company's technology leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze data and present it to users in plain English.
"Jignesh and his team have a radically different approach to democratize analytics using a novel conversational paradigm," Redline Capital partner Tatiana Evtushenkova said in a statement. "They have a compelling vision to dramatically transform the existing analytics ecosystem."
With around 35 employees, DataChat's team has more than doubled in the last 11 months, Patel said. It's continuing to hire as fast as possible but finding talent is a bottleneck, Patel said.
Most DataChat employees are in Madison but the company will hire employees based anywhere, Patel said. It has two Madison offices located on the UW-Madison campus at 1403 University Ave. and at the University Research Park.
DataChat's Series A round could be among the largest venture capital deals in Wisconsin this year. The average round size in the state last year was $4.2 million, according to a Wisconsin Technology Council report.
Other relatively large venture capital financing rounds from Wisconsin-based companies this year have been a $45 million Series D round by Redox, a $45 million Series B round by Veda Data Solutions Inc. and a $22.5 million Series B round by Rentable. All of those companies are based in Madison.
Additionally, Madison's Fetch Rewards raised $210 million and Janesville's SHINE Medical Technologies raised $150 million earlier this year.
