5 Top Data Companies

The term “data company” is certainly broad. It could easily include giant social networks like Meta. The company has perhaps one of the world’s most valuable data sets, which includes about 2.94 billion monthly active users (MAUs). Meta also has many of the world’s elite data scientists on its staff.

But for purposes of this article, the term will be narrower. The focus will be on those operators that build platforms and tools to leverage data – one of the most important technologies in enterprises these days.

Yet even this category still has many companies. For example, if you do a search for data analytics on G2, you will see results for over 2,200 products.

So when coming up with a list of top data companies, it will be, well, imperfect. Regardless, there are companies that are really in a league of their own, from established names to fast-growing startups, publicly traded and privately held. Let’s take a look at five of them.

Also see out picks for Top Data Startups.

Databricks

In 2012, a group of computer scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, created the open source project, Apache Spark. The goal was to develop a distributed system for data over a cluster of machines.

From the start, the project saw lots of traction, as there was a huge demand for sophisticated applications like deep learning. The project’s founders would then go on to create a company called Databricks.

The platform combines a data warehouse and data lakes, which are natively in the cloud. This allows for much more powerful analytics and artificial intelligence applications. There are more than 7,000 paying customers, such as H&M Group, Regeneron and Shell. Last summer, the ARR (annual recurring revenue) hit $600 million.

About the same time, Databricks raised $1.6 billion in a Series H funding and the valuation was set at a stunning $38 billion. Some of the investors included Andreessen Horowitz, Franklin Templeton and T. Rowe Price Associates. An IPO is expected at some point, but even before the current tech stock downturn, the company seemed in no hurry to test the public markets.

We’ve included Databricks on our lists of the Top DataOps Tools and the Top Big Data Storage Products.

SAS

SAS (Statistical Analysis System), long a private company, is one of the pioneers of data analytics. The origins of the company actually go back to 1966 at North Carolina State University. Professors created a program that performed statistical functions using the IBM System/360 mainframe. But when government funding dried up, SAS would become a company.

It was certainly a good move. SAS would go on to become the gold standard for data analytics. Its platform allows for AI, machine learning, predictive analytics, risk management, data quality and fraud management.

Currently, there are 80,800 customers, which includes 88 of the Top 100 on the Fortune 500.  There are 11,764 employees and revenues hit $3.2 billion last year.

SAS is one of the world’s largest privately-held software companies. Last summer, SAS was in talks to sell to Broadcom for $15 billion to $20 billion. But the co-founders decided to stay independent and despite having remained private since the company’s 1976 founding, are planning an IPO by 2024.

It should surprise absolutely no one that SAS made our list of the top data analytics products.

Snowflake

Snowflake, which operates a cloud-based data platform, pulled off the largest IPO for a software company in late 2020. It raised a whopping $3.4 billion. The offering price was $120 and it surged to $254 on the first day of trading, bringing the market value to over $70 billion. Not bad for a company that was about eight years old.

Snowflake stock would eventually go above $350. But of course, with the plunge in tech stocks, the company’s stock price would also come under extreme pressure. It would hit a low of $110 a few weeks ago.

Despite all this, Snowflake continues to grow at a blistering pace. In the latest quarter, the company reported an 85% spike in revenues to $422.4 million and the net retention rate was an impressive 174%. The customer base, which was over 6,300, had 206 companies with capacity arrangements that led to more than $1 million in product revenue in the past 12 months.

Snowflake started as a data warehouse. But the company has since expanded on its offerings to include data lakes, cybersecurity, collaboration, and data science applications. Snowflake has also been moving into on-premises storage, such as querying S3-compatible systems without moving data.

Snowflake is actually in the early stages of the opportunity. According to its latest investor presentation, the total addressable market is about $248 billion.

Like Databricks, Snowflake made our lists of the best DataOps and Big Data Storage tools.

Splunk

Founded in 2003, Splunk is the pioneer in collecting and analyzing large amounts of machine-generated data. This makes it possible to create highly useful reports and dashboards.

A key to the success of Splunk is its vibrant ecosystem, which includes more than 2,400 partners. There is also a marketplace that has over 2,400 apps.

A good part of the focus for Splunk has been on cybersecurity. By using real-time log analysis, a company can detect outliers or unusual activities.

Yet the Splunk platform has shown success in many other categories. For example, the technology helps with cloud migration, application modernization, and IT modernization.

In March, Splunk announced a new CEO, Gary Steele. Prior to this, he was CEO of Proofpoint, a fast-growing cloud-based security company.

On Steele’s first earnings report, he said: “Splunk is a system of record that’s deeply embedded within customers’ businesses and provides the foundation for security and resilience so that they can innovate with speed and agility. All of this translated to a massive, untapped, unique opportunity, from which I believe we can drive long-term durable growth while progressively increasing operating margins and cash flow.”

Cloudera

While there is a secular change towards the cloud, the reality is that many large enterprises still have significant on-premises footprints. A key reason for this is compliance. There is a need to have much more control over data because of privacy requirements.

But there are other areas where data fragmentation is inevitable. This is the case for edge devices and streaming from third parties and partners.

For Cloudera, the company has built a platform that is for the hybrid data strategy.This means that customers can take full advantage of their data everywhere.

“The cloud hyperscalers are providing jalopies — vehicles of mismatched components, slapped together in haphazard fashion — while Cloudera is offering an elegant, a well-engineered vehicle, which we could liken to a luxury sedan, a sports car or both,” said Andrew Brust, founder and CEO of Blue Badge Insights.

Last year, Cloudera reported revenues over $1 billion. Among its thousands of customers, they include over 400 governments, the top ten global telcos and nine of the top ten healthcare companies.

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