Dataminr Secures $85M in Funding to Boost AI-Powered Real-Time Analytics Platform

Analytics company Dataminr secures $85M to fund growth | TechCrunch

Dataminr, a data analytics company that counts NATO and OpenAI among its customers, has raised $85 million in a combination of convertible financing and credit, Dataminr announced on Wednesday. It's chump change for Dataminr, which closed a $475 million round at a $4.1 billion valuation in 2021. But the company has seen its fair share of downs as well as ups. In November 2023, Dataminr laid off 20% of its staff as it raced to fend off economic headwinds and "doubled down" on AI. "The new capital will allow Dataminr to accelerate its growth trajectory, [and] provide investors with a discount to the IPO price or subsequent round of financing," CEO Ted Bailey told TechCrunch. "[We'll] also use this new funding to expand [our] international go-to-market in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and to power additional products in new verticals." Bailey added that the new tranche, which was led by security-focused VC NightDragon and HSBC, is "pre-IPO convertible financing" and doesn't set a valuation. NightDragon also created a special-purpose vehicle (SVP) for an additional $100 million in convertible financing from the VC's affiliates and partners. SVPs are alternative fundraising structures that allow multiple backers to pool their capital and make a single large investment. Dataminr, which Bailey founded in 2009 alongside fellow Yale graduates Sam Hendel and Jeff Kinsey, monitors real-time events around the world. The New York-based firm provides tools designed to aid with response to crisis situations -- tools that can crawl through text, images, videos, audio, and sensor data to generate event briefs. Dataminr is an unequivocal success in several respects. The company serves over 800 customers, including two-thirds of the Fortune 50, along with 1,500 newsrooms. It's approaching $200 million in annual recurring revenue, and it has a five-year, $282 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense. But Dataminr's history is somewhat clouded with controversy. According to reports from The Intercept, Dataminr has provided social media surveillance on lawful, pro-abortion rights protests to the U.S. Marshals. Police departments are said to have used Dataminr services for surveillance during Black Lives Matter protests. And Dataminr has been accused of getting critical facts wrong, like the status of American servicemembers in Western Iraq. Dataminr said that it's constantly improving its technology, and that it doesn't offer functionality that would allow a customer to pinpoint a person's -- or protestor's -- location on a map. "[Our] AI tech steers corporate security across the federal government, OpenAI, humanitarian missions at the United Nations, and security at the world's biggest events, including the Super Bowl, Olympics, and more," Bailey said. "Dataminr is without a viable competitor that can perform at our level of speed, scope, and accuracy of our AI platform." Prior to the new financing round, Dataminr had raised $1.1 billion in venture capital and debt, according to Crunchbase.

Dataminr raises $85M for its real-time analytics platform - SiliconANGLE

Dataminr Inc., a startup that helps organizations quickly detect risks such as cyberattacks, has raised $85 million in debt funding to enhance its technology. The company announced the deal today. Some of the debt financing, which came from NightDragon and HSBC, was provided as a convertible loan. This is a type of loan that the lender can optionally turn into equity. NightDragon plans to set up an investment vehicle that will allow Dataminr to raise $100 million in additional convertible debt from third-party backers. Previously, the software maker closed a $475 million equity funding round in 2021. The Series F round valued it at $4.1 billion. Dataminr provides an analytics platform that helps companies track real-time events. According to the company, its software processes billions of publicly available data points every day to find developments of interest. This information lends itself to a wide range of use cases. A delivery company could use Dataminr to detect lane closures that might require its drivers to take detours. Cybersecurity teams, in turn, rely on the software to spot emerging hacking campaigns that may target their organizations. Additionally, Dataminr says that its platform is used by more than 100 U.S. government agencies. "When seconds matter and truth is obscure, Dataminr is helping the world's leading organizations and governments make smarter, more informed decisions in real-time by pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI," said NightDragon founder and Chief Executive Officer Dave DeWalt. Under the hood, Dataminr's platform is powered by more than 50 proprietary artificial intelligence models. Some are designed to analyze multimodal data. Others are large language models optimized for text processing. One of Dataminr's newest models, ReGenAI, can produce a report about an important event and add more details as they become available. After last year's CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. outage, ReGenAI quickly generated an incident summary based on early customer complaints. It then gradually added new information about the cause and impact of the malfunction. The financing round announced today will enable Dataminr to further extend its feature set. The development effort is set to place to place particular emphasis on the company's AI capabilities. Next month, Dataminr will roll out an AI tool called Context Agents. It will enable the company's platform to provide more relevant information about breaking events. Further down the road, Dataminr plans to add AI features capable of predicting what might happen next. In parallel with the new engineering investments, the company will expand its international go-to-market teams to support sales growth. Dataminr disclosed on occasion of the financing round that it's already approaching $200 million in annualized recurring revenue.

Dataminr raises $85M in funding for its AI platform - SiliconANGLE

Dataminr Inc., a startup that helps organizations quickly detect risks such as cyberattacks, has raised $85 million in debt funding to enhance its technology. The company announced the deal today. Some of the debt financing, which came from NightDragon and HSBC, was provided as a convertible loan. This is a type of loan that the lender can optionally turn into equity. NightDragon plans to set up an investment vehicle that will allow Dataminr to raise $100 million in additional convertible debt from third-party backers. Previously, the software maker closed a $475 million equity funding round in 2021. The Series F round valued it at $4.1 billion. Dataminr provides an artificial intelligence platform that helps companies track real-time events. According to the company, its software processes billions of publicly available data points every day to find developments of interest. This information lends itself to a wide range of use cases. A delivery company could use Dataminr to detect lane closures that might require its drivers to take detours. Cybersecurity teams, in turn, rely on the software to spot emerging hacking campaigns that may target their organizations. Additionally, Dataminr says that its platform is used by more than 100 U.S. government agencies. "When seconds matter and truth is obscure, Dataminr is helping the world's leading organizations and governments make smarter, more informed decisions in real-time by pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI," said NightDragon founder and Chief Executive Officer Dave DeWalt. Under the hood, Dataminr's platform is powered by more than 50 proprietary AI models. Some are designed to analyze multimodal data. Others are large language models optimized for text processing. One of Dataminr's newest models, ReGenAI, can produce a report about an important event and add more details as they become available. After last year's CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. outage, ReGenAI quickly generated an incident summary based on early customer complaints. It then gradually added new information about the cause and impact of the malfunction. The financing round announced today will enable Dataminr to further extend its feature set. The development effort is set to place to place particular emphasis on the company's AI capabilities. Next month, Dataminr will roll out an AI tool called Context Agents. It will enable the company's platform to provide more relevant information about breaking events. Further down the road, Dataminr plans to add AI features capable of predicting what might happen next. In parallel with the new engineering investments, the company will expand its international go-to-market teams to support sales growth. Dataminr disclosed on occasion of the financing round that it's already approaching $200 million in annualized recurring revenue.