Data architecture startup Firebolt becomes newest unicorn with $100m investment
Series C funding led by New York investment firm Alkeon Capital values company, founded in 2019, at $1.4 billion
Ricky Ben-David is a Times of Israel editor and reporter
Data architecture startup Firebolt this week became Israel’s newest unicorn, a private company valued at over $1 billion, after pulling in a new Series C investment of $100 million just six months after raising $127 million.
The newest fundraise, led by New York investment firm Alkeon Capital, values Firebolt at $1.4 billion, according to the company. Additional investors included California VC firms Sozo Ventures and Glynn Capital, as well as existing backers Zeev Ventures, Angular Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and TLV Partners.
Based in Tel Aviv, Firebolt was founded in 2019 by Eldad Farkash, also a co-founder of business intelligence firm Sisense, and Saar Bitner, to provide powerful analytics for data engineers and software developers.
The company said in a statement that it plans to use the fresh investment to meet “exploding demand” from tech companies to leverage big data and build data and analytics-enabled products,” and further expand its product and engineering teams.
Firebolt also announced that it was appointing Mosha Pasumansky, a renowned data analytics expert and previously a principal engineer on Google’s BigQuery team, as chief technology officer (CTO) and opening a Seattle office. The company employs about 200 people in 25 countries “thanks to its remote-first culture,” it said.
Over the past year, Firebolt said it has “gained strong traction with some of the world’s fastest-growing tech companies – providing the builders of data apps with the infrastructure to support their future growth and enable their agility.” The company expects further growth in a cloud analytics market that is estimated to reach $65 billion by 2025, according to recent research, with strong demand driven by vast digitization.
“Data is at the core of every app today,” Farkash, who serves as CEO, said in a statement. “This means every software engineer is essentially becoming also a data engineer. We see the role of the data warehouse as the foundation on top of which companies build all kinds of analytics experiences. Firebolt’s purpose is to push the boundaries of what can be done with analytics and allow companies to leverage data into previously unreachable territories.”
Abhi Arun, a managing partner at Alkeon Capital, said, “We’re seeing a shift in the market where every modern app today requires a performant and scalable data infrastructure, we believe that Firebolt is perfectly positioned to lead this segment of the market and become the cloud data warehouse of choice for modern data engineering and dev teams building interactive analytics experiences at scale.”
