Coatue and Sequoia Invest $40 Million in Domino

Nick Elprin2018-08-08 | 3 min read

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We’re excited to announce that Sequoia Capital and Coatue Management have led a $40 million funding round for Domino, which also includes previous investors Zetta Venture Partners and Bloomberg Beta. We will be using this investment to accelerate development of new data science platform functionality, acquire talent, expand globally, and secure and deepen strategic partnerships with companies like SAS and Amazon.

Beneath the excitement for all the possibilities, there are two things that really invigorate me about this investment: first: what it says about our customers; and second: what it reflects about the market.

First, this highlights the success our long-time customers are experiencing and the desire for many new customers to become model-driven. Long-time customers and industry leaders like Allstate, Bayer, Bristol Myers-Squibb, and others have increased their partnership with Domino at a rapid rate based on their models driving strong business value. Furthermore, new leaders like EasyJet, BNP Paribas Cardif, SunCorp Group, and Lloyds Banking Group have all recently partnered with Domino to accelerate their path to become model-driven. We are excited to deepen our relationships with industry leaders and see the demand for Domino accelerate.

Second, this round reflects the size and importance of the opportunity to help companies become model-driven businesses. Just as software separated the winners and losers in a previous era of computing, companies increasingly realize that becoming model-driven is not a nice-to-have but a survival imperative. Moreover, they recognize that success in data science comes from building a new organizational capability, not just buying some over-hyped AI tool.

We discussed this in May with 300+ data science leaders, executives, and practitioners at our inaugural conference Rev in San Francisco. We laid out our vision of Model Management — a new category of technologies and processes that help organizations consistently and safely develop, validate, deliver, and monitor models that create a competitive advantage. The reaction from the industry has been overwhelmingly positive and humbling.

This funding round will help us grow both our employee base and ecosystem, to meet the rapidly growing demand of companies to become model-driven. If you’re interested in helping your company on this journey, check out our recent paper. If you’re interested in helping us enable other companies to become model-driven, check out our careers page. While the transformative impact of models is already being felt, we believe this is just the beginning.

Nick Elprin is the CEO and co-founder of Domino Data Lab, provider of the open data science platform that powers model-driven enterprises such as Allstate, Bristol Myers Squibb, Dell and Lockheed Martin. Before starting Domino, Nick built tools for quantitative researchers at Bridgewater, one of the world's largest hedge funds. He has over a decade of experience working with data scientists at advanced enterprises. He holds a BA and MS in computer science from Harvard.

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