Big Data Startup ChaosSearch Raises $40M, Looks To Accelerate Growth

Data analytics startup ChaosSearch has raised $40 million in Series B funding, providing a cash infusion the Boston-based company will use to support its rapid growth.

The new round of financing, which brings the company’s total funding to $59 million, was led by new investors Stripes and Moore Strategic Ventures, with participation by Series A investors Glasswing Ventures, .406 Ventures and Stage 1 Ventures.

“At Stripes, we have been investing for several years based on the thesis that enterprises are increasingly data-driven. After speaking with numerous customers and assessing the competitive landscape, it became clear that ChaosSearch has delivered the right solution to an enormous problem in data analytics today,” said Ron Shah, a partner with Stripes, in a statement. Shah has joined ChaosSearch’s board of directors.

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ChaosSearch develops a massively scalable log file analysis platform, delivered as a fully managed service, that serves as a data lake engine that businesses and organizations can use to search and analyze cloud data.

The company develops its ChaosSearch Data Platform as a more scalable alternative to – but compatible with – the commonly used “ELK stack” of Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana open-source software. ChaosSearch also competes against software from Splunk, Sumo Logic and other commercial software developers.

ChaosSearch said the company has seen “triple-digit sales growth” in 2020 while rapidly expanding its customer base in the U.S. and Europe.

“Businesses that have been struggling with the high cost and complexity of large-scale data analysis are knocking down our doors looking for a better, simpler, and more cost-effective solution,” said CEO Ed Walsh in a statement about the new funding.

Walsh said the company hadn’t planned on seeking additional capital this year, but that “investors saw the opportunity and approached us about accelerating our plans,” he said. “This round is an acknowledgement of the substantial value our team has created this year and a validation of the opportunity in front of us.”

The CEO said the company will use the additional funding to grow its employee roster, expand the use cases for the ChaosSearch product, and more rapidly build “a scalable, repeatable go-to-market model.”

ChaosSearch was found in 2017 by CTO Tom Hazel. Walsh, previously general manager of storage systems at IBM, was hired as CEO in August. In October the company hired Melinda Smith, most recently CFO for PayPal’s Venmo business unit, as its new chief financial officer.

ChaosSearch operates the ChaosSearch Alliance Partner program for systems integrator and consultant partners.