Seattle Startup Igneous Is Attracting Investors With Its Ingenious Data-Management Solution

A Seattle tech company called Igneous Inc. has developed a leading-edge unstructured data service to address runaway data growth in the business world and has raised nearly $50 million from investors since 2014 to propel its business model including $25 million this week in a Series C funding round led by Kirkland, Washington-based investment firm WestRiver Group (WRG).

Participating with WRG in the latest funding round are existing investors Madrona Venture Group, NEA, Vulcan Capital and Redpoint Ventures.

The new funding will be used to expand Igneous technology, which is focused on solving the mounting issues enterprises deal with in managing, protecting and getting value from their growing volumes of unstructured data, a company statement says. In April 2014, the startup venture raised some $24 million from a group of 12 investors, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

In the modern economy, data can be golden, but only if the petabytes of information bits that exist across computer platforms can be organized, tapped efficiently and put to good use.

Igneous offers the first comprehensive data-management-as-a-service solution for IT teams and data owners, the companys website says. Purpose-built to handle billions of files, hundreds of file systems, and petabytes of data, Igneous solutions help organizations manage their unstructured data at scale, anywhere data lives.

Anthony Bontrager, managing director at WRG, says Igneous is attractive as an investment because it can help clients unlock the value of their datasets and simultaneously reduce their risk profile.

This is a complex problem, Bontrager adds, that Igneous has tackled with impressive technology services.