Datadog Acquires AI-Powered Data Observability Startup Metaplane to Enhance AI System Reliability

Datadog acquires AI-powered observability startup Metaplane | TechCrunch

Cloud monitoring and security platform Datadog on Wednesday announced that it has acquired Metaplane, an AI-powered data observability startup, for an undisclosed amount. In a press release, Datadog said that the deal "accelerates" its expansion into data observability, building on the launch of related products. Metaplane will continue supporting existing and new customers through a rebranded "Metaplane by Datadog" offering. "Observability is no longer just for developers and IT teams; it's now an essential part of data teams' day-to-day responsibilities as they manage increasingly complex and business-critical workflows," Datadog VP Michael Whetten said in a statement. "This complexity will become even more pronounced as more businesses deploy AI applications. By unifying observability across applications and data, Datadog will help organizations build reliable AI systems." MIT graduate Kevin Hu, former HubSpot engineer Peter Casinelli, and ex-Appcues developer Guru Mahendran founded Metaplane in 2020. The three co-founders originally launched the company as a "customer success" product that analyzed firms' data to prevent churn. After going through Y Combinator -- and with the pandemic hitting -- Metaplane pivoted but continued to build data analytics-focused tools. Metaplane monitors data using anomaly detection AI models trained primarily on historical metadata. It attempts to establish lineage from data in a data warehouse -- the systems used for reporting and data analysis -- and notify stakeholders of issues via their tool of choice (e.g. Slack, PagerDuty, and so on). From those tools, users can mark any alert as an expected change, and Metaplane's system will learn over time. Prior to its exit, Metaplane managed to raise $22.2 million from investors including Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, Flybridge Capital Partners, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, and HubSpot CTO Dharmesh Shah. As of January 2023, the Boston-based startup had around 10 employees. "Our mission at Metaplane is to help companies ensure trust in the data that powers their business," Hu said in a statement. "Joining forces with Datadog enables us to bring data observability to tens of thousands more companies, while bringing data teams and software teams closer together." Metaplane is Datadog's second acquisition this year. In January, the company acquired Quickwit, an open source, cloud-native search engine for logs. Growing its data observability portfolio makes sense for Datadog, which recently reported earnings that topped estimates but full-year 2025 revenue guidance that came in well below expectations. Observability is a large and healthy market -- one that could become a significant source of business for Datadog down the line. According to Grand View Research, the market for data observability tools was worth $2.14 billion in 2023 and could climb at a 12.2% compound annual growth rate between 2024 and 2030. Of course, there's stiff competition. Big players include Monte Carlo, Cribl, Manta, Observe, Better Stack, Coralogix, and Unravel Data. Datadog's challenge will be sufficiently differentiating its data observability products, which the company is attempting to do both through acquisitions like Metaplane as well as in-house projects such as jobs and streams monitoring.

Datadog snaps up Metaplane to improve data quality for AI applications and systems - SiliconANGLE

Cloud security and application monitoring giant Datadog Inc. said today it's looking to expand the scope of its data observability offerings after acquiring a startup called Metaplane. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Datadog stressed that Metaplane will help to accelerate its push into the area of data observability, where it already offers a number of its own products. By adding Metaplane's tools to its own suite, Datadog users will be able to identify and take instant action to remedy any data quality issues affecting their most critical business applications, the company said. Metaplane, founded in 2020, has built an end-to-end data observability platform that combines artificial intelligence with column-level lineage to try and detect, resolve and also prevent data quality problems from occurring. It's an important tool for any company that's trying to make data-driven decisions, as "bad" data means those decisions are being made based on the wrong insights. The company has created proprietary, AI-powered anomaly detection models, and it trains these on its customers' historical metadata to establish a baseline about what is good - and bad - data. It then attempts to establish lineages in the customer's data warehouse, leveraging the same tools it uses for reporting and data analysis. This allows it to notify customers of any issues with the tools that are creating their data, such as Slack, PagerDuty etc. Metaplane had raised $22.3 million in venture capital prior to being acquired, with backers including Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures and Flybridge Capital Partners, and has around 10 employees. Datadog Vice President Michael Whetten said observability has become vital in the day-to-day responsibilities of data operations teams. Moreover, he believes it will become increasingly important as more enterprises deploy AI applications, which need high quality data for accuracy. According to Whetten, Metaplane's offerings will help the company to unify observability across data and applications so its customers can "build reliable AI systems". When the acquisition closes, Metaplane will continue to support its existing customers as a standalone product, though it will be rebranded as "Metaplane by Datadog". Of course, Datadog will also look to integrate Metaplane's capabilities within its own platform, and likely do its utmost to get Metaplane's customers onboard. Metplane co-founder and Chief Executive Kevin Hu said his company's mission has always been about ensuring trust in the data that powers their business. "Joining forces with Datadog enables us to bring data observability to tens of thousands more companies, while bringing data teams and software teams closer together," he said. Datadog has already made one other acquisition this year, buying a company called Quickwit Inc. in January for an undisclosed price. That company had built an open-source and cloud-native search engine for data logs, which is being integrated within the Datadog platform. The focus on data observability comes at a critical time for Datadog, which has been suffering from the disruption caused by U.S. President Donald Trump's economic policies. In its most recent earnings call in February, Datadog beat expectations, but its fiscal 2025 revenue forecast fell short of analyst's expectations. The data observability market is therefore a tempting target for Datadog. According to data from Grand View Research, the data observability tools market was valued at $2.14 billion in 2023, and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12.2% between 2024 and 2030. Datadog faces a lot of competition in the squabble for a piece of that pie, however. Rivals include Monte Carlo Data Inc., Cribl Inc., Observe Inc., Relyance AI Inc., Better Stack Inc. and Coralogix Ltd., to name just a few. Like those players, Datadog will need to differentiate its data observability tools from those rivals if it wants to capitalize on the market's potential. Buying Metaplane is one way of doing that.

Datadog Buys AI Data Startup Metaplane To 'Build Reliable AI Systems'

Datadog has acquired Boston-based AI data startup Metaplane in a move to boost observability innovation and build better AI systems for customers. Datadog is accelerating its expansion into data observability with the acquisition of Metaplane, an AI-powered data startup, with plans to create new innovations to empower data teams. "Observability is no longer just for developers and IT teams," said Datadog's Michael Whetten, vice president of product, in a statement. "It's now an essential part of data teams' day-to-day responsibilities as they manage increasingly complex and business-critical workflows." "This complexity will become even more pronounced as more businesses deploy AI applications," Whetten added. [Related: OpenAI Would Buy Google Chrome, ChatGPT Head Says At Trial] Datadog, a New York City-based observability and cloud security platform, will leverage Metaplane to enable data teams to take action on insights and make a broader impact throughout their organizations. By unifying observability across applications and data, Datadog can better help organizations "build reliable AI systems," Whetten said The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2020, Metaplane provides an end-to-end data observability platform that offers machine learning-powered monitoring and column-level lineage to prevent, detect and resolve data quality issues across a company's data stack. Boston-based Metaplane monitors data using anomaly detection AI models trained primarily on historical metadata. The company has raised a total of $22 million from investors over the years. Datadog's SaaS platform integrates and automates infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, log management, user experience monitoring and cloud security to provide unified observability and security for businesses. Metaplane CEO and co-founder Kevin Hu said his company's mission is to help customers ensure trust in their data. "Joining forces with Datadog enables us to bring data observability to tens of thousands more companies, while bringing data teams and software teams closer together," Hu said in a statement. Metaplane will now be called Metaplane by Datadog. The company says it will continue to support existing customers and bring on new clients now as part of Datadog. In other company news this month, Datadog unveiled plans for a new data center in Australia. The data center will be the company's first in Australia and adds to existing locations in North America, Asia, and Europe.

Datadog Targets Data Observability With Metaplane Acquisition

Datadog has announced the acquisition of Metaplane, an end-to-end data observability platform that provides advanced machine learning-powered monitoring and column-level lineage to prevent, detect and resolve data quality issues across a company's entire data stack. With the emergence of AI and widespread adoption of platforms like Snowflake and Databricks, trust in data has never been more critical to the growth of a business. The acquisition of Metaplane accelerates Datadog's expansion into data observability -- building on launches of related products like Data Jobs Monitoring and Data Streams Monitoring. Data observability tools monitor a company's data stack for changes and failures by continuously observing the properties of the underlying data. Existing tools, however, have a limited view -- they only see data after it lands in a data lake or warehouse. For data teams to be proactive, they need visibility across the full end-to-end data lifecycle -- from production in software systems to transformation and consumption. This visibility has taken on more importance as data teams have become responsible for building AI applications and data products. Datadog's acquisition of Metaplane will ultimately empower data teams to take action on insights and make a broader impact throughout their organisations and across the complete data stack. "Observability is no longer just for developers and IT teams; it's now an essential part of data teams' day-to-day responsibilities as they manage increasingly complex and business-critical workflows," said Michael Whetten, VP of Product at Datadog. "This complexity will become even more pronounced as more businesses deploy AI applications. By unifying observability across applications and data, Datadog will help organisations build reliable AI systems." "Our mission at Metaplane is to help companies ensure trust in the data that powers their business. Joining forces with Datadog enables us to bring data observability to tens of thousands more companies, while bringing data teams and software teams closer together," said Kevin Hu, co-founder and CEO of Metaplane. Metaplane will continue supporting existing customers and bringing on new customers as part of Metaplane by Datadog. Datadog is the observability and security platform for cloud applications. Our SaaS platform integrates and automates infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, log management, user experience monitoring, cloud security and many other capabilities to provide unified, real-time observability and security for our customers' entire technology stack. Datadog is used by organisations of all sizes and across a wide range of industries to enable digital transformation and cloud migration, drive collaboration among development, operations, security and business teams, accelerate time to market for applications, reduce time to problem resolution, secure applications and infrastructure, understand user behaviour and track key business metrics. This press release may include certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Securities Act, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended including statements on the benefits of new products and features. These forward-looking statements reflect our current views about our plans, intentions, expectations, strategies and prospects, which are based on the information currently available to us and on assumptions we have made. Actual results may differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements and are subject to a variety of assumptions, uncertainties, risks and factors that are beyond our control, including those risks detailed under the caption "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including the Quarterly Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 20, 2025, as well as future filings and reports by us. Except as required by law, we undertake no duty or obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release as a result of new information, future events, changes in expectations or otherwise.