DataStax Raises Big $115M Round From Goldman, Valuation Hits $1.6B

Big valuations aren’t dead yet in the venture world.

Santa Clara, California-based data company DataStax locked up a $115 million round led by the growth equity business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management that values the company at $1.6 billion.

The valuation represents a 33% premium over the venture round led by Goldman it raised about a year ago.

The new round also included participation from the CM Private Markets fund advised by Rokos Capital Management, EDB Investments and existing investors Crosslink Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, OnePrime Capital and other current investors.

Founded in 2010, DataStax has raised more than $340 million to date, according to Crunchbase data.

The fresh cash comes just a month after the company announced 350% year-to-year sales growth after its first quarter. DataStax will use the proceeds to accelerate development of its Astra DB multicloud database and its Astra Streaming message and event streaming service.

Through the last few years, DataStax has transformed itself from a layer that sits on top of Apache Cassandra databases to a real-time data offering for application developers that removes database restrictions.

“Today’s market leaders run their business with real-time data to create instant intelligence and drive actions,” said Holger Staude, managing director at Goldman Sachs, in a release. “That’s exactly what DataStax empowers companies to do, and why we are excited to support the next generation of digital applications with our investment.”

The round also represents a nice tranche of cash for venture-backed companies in the database software and hardware sector. According to Crunchbase data, this year has been slow for such startups.

While last year saw more than $4.7 billion in venture dollars go to startups in the sector in 168 deals, so far this year that funding has slowed to only about $1.5 billion in 61 deals.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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