Dear customers, partners, teams and fellow data citizens,
I am thrilled to share that today marks a new and important milestone for Collibra. We just announced a new round of funding – our $250 million Series G led by Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Sofina for a valuation of $5.25 billion that will help us continue to accelerate our growth and cement our status as the market leader for data intelligence.
As I look back on the more than 13 years on this Collibra journey, I want to start by saying how thankful I am to everyone for all their contributions and support. Your commitment makes all the difference.
First act: Where we started
We started Collibra in 2008 based on years of academic research on semantic technology. In our first act, we pioneered data governance and continue to lead this category. Today, every organization understands that data governance is a necessity to truly derive value from data. However, data governance alone is no longer enough.
Digital transformation has accelerated, advancements in AI and machine learning are changing the way we live and work, and we’ve seen an incredible level of innovation as data infrastructure has moved to the cloud. In short, there’s more data and more people involved with data.
In spite of all the innovation in data infrastructure and tooling, the level of complexity and fragmentation around data is higher than ever. This is making it harder for organizations to deliver data outcomes they can trust – within an acceptable time frame – that are also compliant with security and privacy requirements.
Working with our Global 2000 customers and anticipating their needs, we’ve expanded our vision from data governance to data intelligence. Data intelligence is an organization’s ability to understand the entire data landscape, trust that the right data is being used in the right way, and automate processes to deliver better data outcomes faster.
At the core of data intelligence lies a metadata graph – a type of knowledge graph that connects the entire data landscape. This graph is the foundation for data intelligence and spans governance, lineage, discovery, quality, observability, privacy and security.
Second act: Where we are headed
In our second act, we will advance and lead the Data Intelligence category as it becomes a mission-critical part of every modern data architecture. This round of funding uniquely positions Collibra to double-down on our vision of uniting organizations around data and our belief that governed, accessible, and trusted data has the power to change the world.
We will continue to invest heavily in our Collibra Data Intelligence Cloud platform, particularly in these three key areas:
- Governance, lineage and catalog
- Privacy and security
- Quality and observability
As part of our March to a Billion journey, we are providing a metadata graph that enables enterprises to discover, classify and understand data at scale. Through this metadata graph, we are also uniquely able to provide organizations with a single, easy-to-use and integrated out of the box experience.
To further this goal, we will be expanding our ecosystem. This includes deepening our relationships with partners like AWS, Google Cloud, Snowflake and Tableau, as well as supporting our broader community of data citizens.
We will continue to invest in our product, engineering, customer success, sales and marketing teams around the globe to deliver to customers on our promise of a world-class experience. We will soon have over 1,000 Collibrians worldwide, and it is an honor and privilege to work side-by-side with so many talented people.
Our mission has always been to change the way organizations use data so they can change the world. At the heart of Collibra, we believe that everyone, regardless of title or industry, needs easy access to accurate, trustworthy data. A core driver is education at Collibra University, as well as learning opportunities from our online community.
Our ethos, United By Data™, simply embodies our belief that by creating a shared understanding, a common language, we will not only connect data in all its diversity, but ultimately bring people closer together. Thanks again for coming along on this journey. I am excited for what it will bring, and for being able to do it alongside all of you.
Cheers,
Felix
