In recent years, data has been the world’s hottest commodity. Money has gravitated towards companies that collect it, companies that analyse it, and the data infrastructure companies that provide the digital plumbing that makes it all possible.
In the last five years, data infrastructure startups alone have raised over $8 billion of venture capital, at an aggregate value of $35 billion.
We know the names of the biggest companies in the space; they include Databricks, Snowflake, Confluent, MongoDB, Segment, Looker, and Oracle.
But what are they actually for?
Most investors will talk about how data can, in theory, be used to derive trends. Others may talk about how data will change the world, without filling in the blanks on how.