Confluent raises $50M to boost adoption of streaming platforms

Confluent, a provider of the streaming platform based on Apache Kafka, has partnered with Sequoia and raised $50 million in a Series C round. Existing investors Benchmark and Index Ventures also participated in the round, and Sequoia partner Matt Miller joined the Confluent board. The latest round of funding brings the total amount raised by Confluent to $81 million, which it plans to use to further its vision of placing streaming platforms at the heart of every modern business.

“As we work with companies of all sizes deploying streaming platforms and using Apache Kafka, we’re committed to providing the best platform and solutions to use real-time data across the multitude of use cases and believe Matt and Sequoia will be great additions to our team,” said Jay Kreps, Co-founder and CEO, Confluent.

Confluent claims to provide companies with a production-ready streaming platform that contains all of Kafka’s capabilities and enhances them with integrated, tested and packaged features. This makes architecting and managing large scale streaming environments easier to operate and more reliable.

“Data has become the currency of the modern business. Confluent’s streaming platform makes that information easily accessible across public/private clouds, microservices and existing systems,” said Matt Miller, Partner, Sequoia.

“Some customers we spoke to attributed cost savings in the millions of dollars annually to the use of Confluent’s platform. We are enthusiastic to partner as we believe Confluent has the opportunity to be one of the most impactful enterprise technology companies of the next decade,” Miller added. The company aims to give a competitive advantage to every industry that leverages data, including retail, healthcare, financial services, technology and media. By processing this data in a real-time, distributed and scalable way, companies can make decisions that drastically improve brand loyalty and user experience, while lowering operating expenses and business risk.

“We’ve seen the adoption of streaming platforms and Apache Kafka skyrocket over the past few years. What makes the technology and Confluent special is that the team of experts created infrastructure that interconnects all systems within a company, like a freeway,” said Mike Volpi, Partner, at Index Ventures.