Splice Machine raises $16 million for unified machine learning platform

Splice Machine, a self-described data platform for “operational” artificial intelligence (AI), today announced that it’s raised $16 million in series B financing led by GreatPoint Ventures (GPV), with minority equity participation from Accenture Ventures and individual investor and SunBridge Group CEO Allen Miner. The influx of fresh capital — which follows on the heels of a $9 million round led by Salesforce Ventures in December 2017, and which brings Splice Machine’s total raised to $58 million — will be used to “further innovate” its product portfolio and grow its engineering and sales teams, according to CEO Monte Zweben.
As part of the latest financing round, Zweben says the company will invest “heavily” into its recently announced partnership with Accenture to “meet the increased global demand” for operational AI platforms, a market that analysts at IDC expect to reach $60 billion by 2022. And Accenture, for its part, says it’ll become a preferred systems integrator for Splice Machine’s platform globally.
“The speed and quality of decision-making is the most potent weapon in the corporate arsenal today,” Zweben said. “Whether humans or machine learning models are making the decisions, access to the data and computation must be blazingly fast. Splice Machine removes latency from applications to speed high-quality decision-making with an integrated data platform, enabling enterprises to make intelligent decisions in mission-critical applications.”
Splice Machine’s solution, which can be deployed on-premise or as a fully managed cloud service, is somewhat unique in that it combines the functionality of a relational database, data warehouse, and machine learning into a single, unified platform. Its database technology sits on top of Hadoop, HBase, and Spark and enables analysts to inspect data with commands from the traditional SQL query languages. But it’s also transactional, meaning it can undo any transaction should problems arise.
Paul Daugherty, Accenture’s chief technology and innovation officer, says the product offering’s integrated operational workloads and analytics are well-suited to applications in lots of verticals, like predicting customer churn, impending fraud, a medical condition, or anticipating customer purchases. Splice’s customers agree, it would seem — the company tripled revenues and customer count since its last financing round.
“The Splice Machine operational AI platform strengthens our ability to deliver on the power of artificial intelligence,” Daugherty added. “With Accenture and Splice Machine’s combination of operational, analytical, and intelligent capabilities, we can embed intelligence at the core of our clients’ business to make them more agile and become leaders in the age of new IT.”
Zweben cofounded Splice Machine in 2012 with Eugene Davis and John Leach. The startup is headquartered in San Francisco.
Source: VentureBeat