Two Austin companies focused on data have joined forces.
data.world announced this week it has acquired Capsenta, founded at the University of Texas at Austin in 2015.
Capsenta created patented data translation and integration software allowing its customers to combine and analyze relational databases faster and more efficiently.
Data.world, which launched in July of 2016, has raised $44.7 million to date to build its online data platform. Capsenta is the company’s first acquisition. The purchase price was not disclosed. Capsenta had previously raised $750,000 in seed stage funding, according to this 2015 Silicon Hills News profile on the startup.
“Enterprise data management and analysis is operating across two different paradigms—cloud and on-premises—and for Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies, it’s going to be a hybrid world for a long time,” Brett Hurt, co-founder and CEO of data.world, said in a news release. “So I’m very excited about this acquisition because it brings to data.world capabilities that are critical to our enterprise customers, and helps us connect these two worlds together in ways that deliver the benefits of cloud migration while leveraging the value of existing infrastructure investments and on-prem data.”
Following the merger, Capsenta Co-founder and Senior Vice President of Technical Sales and Research Juan Sequeda, PhD will join data.world as Principal Scientist. CEO Wayne Heideman will stay on to manage Capsenta products internally and will serve as data.world’s General Manager of Capsenta. Co-founder Prof. Daniel Miranker, PhD, will advise data.world while continuing his research and teaching career of over 30 years at UT-Austin.
Capsenta brings to data.world its data integration software Ultrawrap™ and its real-time, collaborative, knowledge graph schema modeling tool Gra.fo. In addition, Capsenta’s three issued patents brings the data.world issued patent portfolio to a total of ten with several additional patent applications in process.
“Our research started over a decade ago by asking a basic question—what does it mean to combine relational database and semantic web technology? The outcome was a series of theoretical and systems results which were productized in Capsenta. The solutions we ultimately arrived at, combined with our compliance experience with highly-regulated clients, is a really nice match for data.world and Capsenta customers,” Sequeda said in a news release. “We’re all excited to bring our technology to a whole new audience with a company that’s so dedicated to building truly data-driven cultures.”
“This is a huge win for Austin and for the University of Texas,” Joshua Baer, founder of Capital Factory, said in a news release. “This is a homegrown success story that touches every part of the Austin startup ecosystem. Juan Sequeda has been a startup community leader for the past decade and his Semantic Web meetup was one of the first to meet regularly at Capital Factory. I’m proud to have been an investor in data.world since day one.”
“The University of Texas at Austin has its fingerprints all over the acquisition of Capsenta by data.world,” UT Professor of Innovation Bob Metcalfe said in a news release. “Several years ago Computer Science Professor Daniel Miranker started talking about exciting work with his graduate student Juan Sequeda. They were bringing stores of existing on-premises data, much of it relational, onto the Web by wrapping it in Tim Berners-Lee’s Semantic Web and wanted to commercialize it. So UT-Austin released that intellectual property to them and they went on to form Capsenta with it. With data.world building knowledge graphs for their customers in the cloud and Capsenta making on-premises customer data available via the Semantic Web, they have a perfect match.”
“As an investor in both companies, we are delighted to see the technology platform developed by Capsenta help achieve data.world’s mission to create the most meaningful, collaborative, and abundant data resource in the world,” Venu Shamapant, Founding Partner at LiveOak Venture Partners said in a news release..
