Snowflake-Backed Data Startup Alation Valued at $1.2 Billion

(Bloomberg) -- Alation Inc. has raised $110 million in a new funding round that values the enterprise data startup at $1.2 billion.

The Series D round was led by Riverwood Capital, with participation from Sanabil Investments and Snowflake Ventures, according to Satyen Sangani, co-founder and chief executive officer of Alation. Existing investors Costanoa Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Salesforce Ventures and Sapphire Ventures also took part in the round.

Alation helps clients like Cisco Systems Inc., Nasdaq Inc. and DocuSign Inc. organize their data. It has data solutions for areas including search and discovery, governance and analytics.

The business has “well over $50 million in revenue,” Sangani said in an interview, without specifying the exact number. The Redwood City, California-based company has raised $217 million to date.

While there are a lot of data-related businesses, Sangani said Alation helps with the search and discovery of it, a growing need as companies move more business online. “In a world where everything is moving to digital, you’ve got to be able to understand a lot more information than what was previously coming at you,” he said.

Jeff Parks, co-founder and managing partner at Riverwood Capital, said he views the business as a market leader that is carving out a niche in the data category. He invested because he expects it to “be a future successful public company.”

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