Alation

CEO: Satyen Sangani

Headquarters: Redwood City, Calif.

Alation develops data catalog software and tools for data governance and data search and discovery – all under the “data intelligence” description – that businesses and organizations use to identify and manage their data assets for business intelligence, AI and machine learning tasks and for meeting data regulatory and governance requirements.

Data governance and compliance have historically been the biggest use cases for Alation’s software but demand is also driven by the need for trusted data for AI and machine learning tasks for data cloud migration.

Founded in 2012, Alation has strategic alliances with data cloud service provider Snowflake and cloud application vendor Salesforce. Its customers include Fifth Third Bank, the state of Tennessee, Salesforce and AutoZone, according to the company.

A relationship with Capgemini, an earlier investor in Alation, has led to the company’s software being used in a number of the system integrator’s data migration and digital transformation projects.

Alation raised $110 million in a Series D round of funding this year that boosted the company’s market valuation to $1.2 billion. CRN also ranked the company on its list of “the coolest data management and integration software companies of the 2021 Big Data 100.”

Alation will apply some of the new funding to research and development efforts for its products, including developing connections to additional data sources, and extending its software to the cloud: The company began offering the Alation Cloud Service in April.

Company CEO Satyen Sangani previously worked at Oracle for more than nine years. He left the company in 2012 with the title of vice president of financial services analytical applications, according to his LinkedIn.