MongoDB Raises $80 Million In Venture Funding

MongoDB, one of the young companies challenging established relational database vendors with next-generation database technology, has raised an eye-popping $80 million in venture funding, the company said Monday.

The Series G round, which was completed in December, brings MongoDB's total funding to $311 million. The latest round was led by what the company described as "a sovereign wealth fund," with participation from new investor Goldman Sachs and existing investors Altimeter Capital, NEA, Sequoia and funds managed by T. Rowe Price Associates.

EMC, Red Hat and Intel Capital were also among the company's investors in earlier rounds.

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MongoDB markets a document-oriented "NoSQL" (for "not only SQL") database that the company said is more scalable than older relational database systems from Oracle, Microsoft and others, and can better handle unstructured data.

"The market has reached a tipping point where most developers and IT organizations realize that modern applications cannot continue to be built on relational database technologies," said Dev Ittycheria, MongoDB president and CEO, in a statement.

"They are shifting to MongoDB in a big way. MongoDB was designed to make it easy to develop applications that require rapid change, massive scale, always-on operation, and support for a large variety of unstructured and semistructured data, all at significantly lower costs," he said. "Our investors, who represent some of the smartest and most successful technology investors in the industry, understand this major secular trend.

"These additional funds mean we can further accelerate the delivery of world-class DBMS technology while scaling the business to meet the needs of our users and customers globally," Ittycheria said.

MongoDB, founded in 2007 as 10gen, operates on an open-source development model and sells a commercial version of the database. It competes with other startups in the crowded market for alternative databases, including Couchbase Server and DataStax.

MongoDB's 2,000-plus customers include Craigslist, eBay, Expedia, MTV and Shutterfly.

PUBLISHED JAN. 13, 2015