Open Source as a Service startup Instaclustr raises $20.8 million to accelerate global expansion of its managed platform

Instaclustr, the leading provider of completely managed solutions for scalable open source technologies, has raised $20.8 million in a growth equity investment round to accelerate global expansion of its managed platform. The latest round was led by Level Equity, the New York City-based private investment firm.

The Australia-based Open Source-as-a-Service platform startup delivers fully hosted and managed big data technology solutions in their 100% open source form, providing customers the data capabilities and reliability required to scale with absolute freedom from vendor or technical lock-in. Core technologies currently provided by the managed platform include Apache Cassandra, Apache Spark and Apache Kafka.

Founded in Canberra in 2013 by co-founders Ben Bromhead, Adam Zegelin, Peter Lilley and Doug Stuart, Instaclustr is the Open Source-as-a-Service company, delivering reliability at scale. We operate an automated, proven, and trusted managed environment, providing database, analytics, search, and messaging. We enable companies to focus internal development and operational resources on building cutting edge customer-facing applications. Instaclustr stemmed from the lack of managed support for open source technologies such as Apache Cassandra, a leading NoSQL, open-source database.

The company began in Canberra the two co-founders embarked on their venture to build a data marketplace. This endeavor involved an enormous volume of data, the management of which required the use of complex technologies. Bromhead and Zegelin explored the possibility of having these technologies managed externally while they focused on building their marketplace, but there was no such company to be found. The need to build an environment that managed these technologies in an autonomous manner inspired the birth of Instaclustr.

Now serving more than 100 customers across the globe from a wide range of industries, Instaclustr will double its headcount over the next year, with significant expansion planned for the engineering and development teams based in Australia. The company’s revenues have grown 300% over the last 24 months and this pace is expected to continue.

Level Equity joins existing investors Bailador Technology Investments, ANU Connect Ventures, and Our Innovation Fund, LP. Instaclustr will use this funding to significantly expand its development team and to accelerate building the company’s automated and proven management environment for database, analytics, search and messaging services. The company will soon be including additional open source technologies such as Elasticsearch, Apache Ignite and Apache Flink to the platform.

“We allow customers to get the most production value from an array of powerful open source data solutions – and to do so within a fully managed environment that frees up their IT resources and budget,” said Peter Nichol, CEO, Instaclustr. “The new investment from Level Equity will accelerate our platform’s expansion, grow our sales and support teams, and allow us to reach more organizations seeking to optimize their data-related performance, reliability, security, and scalability.”

Co-founder and CTO, Ben Bromhead, who has relocated to the United States to help drive global expansion said, “I am really excited by this investment and the continued growth of the company. I am also proud that the company will continue to invest in building our engineering and technical operations teams back in Australia.”

“Instaclustr has earned its reputation as a trusted enterprise partner through its unwavering dedication to 100% open source technologies and fast, expert support,” said Ben Levin, Founder and Partner, Level Equity. “Demand for flexible solutions capable of addressing mission-critical data infrastructure is growing exponentially, and this is reflected in the outstanding financial performance Instaclustr has demonstrated in the last several years. The comprehensive managed platform Instaclustr offers is well positioned as a singular backend answer to meet the entire scope of customers’ requirements when it comes to managing the data layer.”

“Because of Instaclustr’s robust platform and readily-available support, we’re able to focus our attention where it belongs: on our product and growing our business,” said Jason Wu, CTO, AdStage. “Working with Instaclustr has given us certainty that our open source deployment is being expertly managed, scaled, and optimized on our behalf. We look forward to continuing to benefit from our relationship with Instaclustr as it expands its managed data technologies.”