Tech startup Grafana Labs raises $24M in Series A funding to build an open source analytics and monitoring solution for every database

Grafana Labs, the open source tech startup behind the monitoring platform that enables its users to collect, store, and analyze data about their infrastructure, has closed $24 million in Series A funding to further invest in the open source community and accelerate the creation of an open and composable observability platform with Grafana at the center.

The round, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and with participation from Lead Edge Capital. In addition to the funding, The startup also announced the appointment of new executives: Douglas Hanna, chief operating officer, Dave Kranowitz, vice president of global sales, and Ryan McKinley, vice president of applications.

Founded by Anthony Woods and Raj Dutt,  Grafana was established five years ago to accelerate the adoption of the Grafana project and to build a sustainable business around it, which could in turn help support the community. Since then, they’ve expanded further in the open source world, creating Metrictank and Grafana Loki and contributing heavily to projects such as Graphite, Prometheus, and Cortex.

“Building on our community momentum, we’ll be pushing the boundaries further with an open and composable observability platform heading into 2020. This is an industry first that uses Grafana to bring together logs, metrics and traces in a single, curated experience, enabling the deepest understanding of application behavior,” said Torkel Ödegaard, co-founder of Grafana Labs and creator of the Grafana project. “With today’s announcement, we’re staying true to our roots while reimagining what’s possible by accelerating our investments in both open source projects and commercial products.”

Grafana helps teams understand and unify their disparate data, no matter where it lives or what kind of database it’s stored in. This unique flexibility allows users to choose their preferred technologies and compose a perfect observability platform for their needs. Grafana Labs helps customers get the most out of open source Grafana, providing the best possible experience while avoiding vendor lock-in and the spiraling costs of closed solutions. Its global community comprises millions of end users and thousands of developers.

Today, more than 500 customers including Bloomberg, eBay, PayPal and Sony turn to Grafana Labs to help bring their disparate data sources together, all through software that is vendor neutral and open source.

“Grafana Labs has come a long way in five years, and continues to break traditional data silos,” said Raj Dutt, co-founder and CEO of Grafana Labs. “We’re proud to have built a sustainable business and while we didn’t need to fundraise, we are excited to be able to further accelerate our investments in the global open source community and build the world’s first, truly open and composable observability platform. We’re also thrilled to have Doug, Dave and Ryan on board to help realize our vision of a successful open source business.”

Commenting on the funding, Gaurav Gupta, Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners, said: “The open source community has always embraced Grafana, while Grafana Labs is really only scratching the surface of what’s possible by building a next-generation, open and composable observability platform. This will be radically different than anything we’ve seen in the market to date. We are thrilled to be part of the journey and look forward to what’s on the horizon.”