Graph Database Developer Neo4j Raises $325 Million In Financing Round

The Series F financing boosts the company’s valuation over the $2 billion threshold as it looks to step up its competition with legacy database vendors.

Next-generation graph database developer Neo4j has raised $325 million in a Series F round of financing that the company described as the largest investment in a private database company.

The financing round increases the San Mateo, Calif.-based company’s pre-money valuation to more than $2 billion, the company said Thursday. The latest round comes on top of the $190.1 million raised in previous rounds, according to the Crunchbase website.

The investment round was led by Eurazeo with participation from GV (formerly Google Ventures). Also participating in the round were existing investors One Peak, Creandum and Greenbridge partners and new investors DTCP and Lightrock.

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“Databases constitute the largest single market in enterprise software, with growth centered in new generations of databases that address today’s data challenges in unprecedented ways,” said Emil Eifrem (pictured), Neo4j co-founder and CEO, in a statement. “This is a magical time in databases, presenting an opportunity for a handful of generational companies to emerge as leaders in the broader landscape. Neo4j is one of these companies, and today’s record-breaking transaction in the database space demonstrates that our new and existing investors share this belief.”

Neo4j, founded in 2007, is one of the leading developers of graph database software, a type of database designed to not only manage data but manage the relationships between the data – showing how each data entity connects with or is related to others.

That makes graph databases particularly effective for such use cases as social network data management, fraud detection, real-time recommendation engines, supply chain management and managing data for 360-degree customer views.

Gartner predicts that by 2025 graph database technology will be used in 80 percent of data and analytics systems, up from 10 percent currently. MarketsandMarkets forecasts that the graph database market will grow at a CAGR of 22.2 percent to $2.9 billion in 2024.

In addition to its flagship ACID-compliant transactional graph database, Neo4j offers the Neo4j Aura fully managed graph database cloud service that launched in January, the Neo4j GraphQL library for low-code API development, and the Neo4j Bloom database visualization, exploration and collaboration tool.

Neo4j customers include Astra Zeneca, Comcast, eBay, UBS, Volvo and WalMart.

The company plans to apply the additional funding to accelerate its development efforts in multi-cloud services and graph data science, and to expand its market reach through “the company’s ecosystem of complementary technologies and expert service providers” who can provide complete solutions around the Neo4j database.

Through the Neo4j Partner Program the database developer works with solution providers such as Carahsoft, Cognizant and Know.bi, as well as OEM and technology partners.

“It is clear that the world is becoming increasingly interconnected, from multi-level global supply chains to ubiquitous automation of processes. It is also clear that businesses who are unable to digitize, analyze, and visualize this interconnectedness will be left behind,” said Nathalie Kornhoff-Brüls, a managing director at investor Eurazo who is joining Neo4j’s board of directors.

“We chose to invest in Neo4j because it is shaping the future of how data and analytics will need to be implemented in the enterprise and beyond. The company’s technology leadership, global developer community, and world-class customer base – combined with an ever-expanding global ecosystem – uniquely position Neo4j to continue to define and lead the graph database category,” Kornhoff-Brüls said in a statement.