Investments in Hadoop: MapR
The strategic position of Hadoop in the big data ecosystem has been reaffirmed by Intel Corp’s investment of $740 million in Cloudera Inc. Before that, the $100 million investment in Hortonworks Inc. by BlackRock and Passport Capital established the prominence of Hadoop as a promising technology.
MapR has raised $64 MM around its Hadoop market from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, New Enterprise Associates and Redpoint Ventures. This company is in talks for another round of late-stage funding.
Intel’s recent investment may have created technology ownership wars among Hadoop investor; but it is interesting to note that this single investment has sparked off more investment and partnership activities among other hardware vendors. Hadoop is projected to become one of the largest IT markets of the decade.
MapR also shares a technical alliance with HP’s Vertica analytics software, now integrated with MapR.
Smartsheet
The provider of a collaboration tool used extensively by global organizations announced its latest VC financing round of $35 million led by Palo Alto-based Sutter Hill Ventures. Insight Venture Partners and Madrona Venture Group, who invested in this company before, also participated in this round.
This capital funding is expected to help in the expansion of the spreadsheet-inspired tool and thrives on future adoption of the technology within large enterprises. Smartsheet enjoys an impressive list of enterprise customers like Google, McGraw-Hill Education, Bucknell University, US-GSA, Netflix, Groupon, Red Hat, Intercontinental Hotels Group, and many other renowned brands. Smartsheets total VC funding acquisitions now stand at $70 MM.
Nokia
Nokia announced a $100 MM fund Connected Car Fund, managed by Nokia Growth Partners to fuel the growth of intelligent vehicles. Nokia Growth Partners plan to work in tandem with Nokias connected driving technology, which includes a dashboard-centric navigation system, a cloud-based service for real-time traffic information, and companion apps for Android and Windows Phones.
After putting its handset business under Microsofts stewardship, Nokia is now poised for the emerging smart car smart market. Initially there were some talks about Nokia selling off its connected driving technology platform to Microsoft, but finally this mobile handset giant declined the offer to sell.
Kabbage
Kabbage, a financial services startup announced its recent venture capital funds of $50 million, only a month after this company closed a $270 million credit faculty. SoftBank Capital led this funding round, with contributions from TCW/Craton and Lumia Capital. Kabbage is using the money from the credit funds to invest in either small or online businesses.
Kabbage utilizes big data to determine the sizes and rates of business loans. Its services primarily target the online merchants. Kabbage uses services like PayPal, or Quick books, to check the financial health of potential borrowers.
Since its inception in May 2011, Kabbage has loaned over $250 million to businesses, according to the company.
