GraphLab has closed a USD6.75m series A funding round led by Madrona Venture Group and NEA.
GraphLab is innovating on the popular open source distributed graph computation framework (graphlab.org) that is used millions of times per day to deliver recommendations through popular consumer services.
Founded by data scientist and entrepreneur Carlos Guestrin (pictured), who began the GraphLab open-source project five years ago, GraphLab is building a commercial product for applying advanced machine learning to massive graph datasets. The company is based in Seattle and will continue to actively support the open source GraphLab project.
"Data has the ability to make our lives better – whether applied to public health, economics, or suggesting the perfect song. But, as the complexity of data sets grows, the need for entirely new ways of thinking about them has grown as well," says Guestrin. "The industry’s response to the GraphLab project has been clear, this is the solution that drives millions of transactions daily and we are excited to build on this success with commercial products that make a difference."
Guestrin is the Amazon Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Washington.
"Graph data is fundamentally different than other datasets and the analytics solutions that companies are using are time intensive to create and to maintain. There is a significant need for graph-specific solutions to answer some of the bigger questions of our time," says Matt McIlwain, managing director, Madrona Venture Group. "Carlos Guestrin is an exceptional talent who brings both business and engineering experience to the table and we are excited to help build this important company with him and his exceptional team."
Complex data sets such as those describing social media networks are commonly described as graph datasets. These graphs describe relationships between people, the products they buy and the pages they like. Graph datasets require novel computational methods, machine learning algorithms, and specialised systems in order to effectively and efficiently analyse outcomes. GraphLab Inc will introduce version 2.2 to the GraphLab open source project at the annual GraphLab workshop in San Francisco on 1 July.
As part of the funding, Matt McIlwain of Madrona Venture Group and Greg Papadopoulos of NEA will be joining the board, with Forest Baskett from NEA as an observer.
