Dataminr, a data analytics company that counts NATO and OpenAI among its customers, has raised $85 million in a combination of convertible financing and credit, the company announced on Wednesday.
It’s chump change for Dataminr, which closed a $475 million round at a $4.1 billion valuation in 2021. But the company has seen its fair share of downs as well as ups. In November 2023, Dataminr laid off 20% of its staff as it raced to fend off economic headwinds and “doubled down” on AI.
“The new capital will allow Dataminr to accelerate its growth trajectory, [and] provide investors with a discount to the IPO price or subsequent round of financing,” CEO Ted Bailey told TechCrunch. “[We’ll] also use this new funding to expand [our] international go-to-market in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and to power additional products in new verticals.”
Bailey added that the new tranche, which was led by security-focused VC NightDragon and HSBC, is “pre-IPO convertible financing” and doesn’t set a valuation. NightDragon also created a special-purpose vehicle (SPV) for an additional $100 million in convertible financing from the VC’s affiliates and partners.
SPVs are alternative fundraising structures that allow multiple backers to pool their capital and make a single large investment.
Dataminr, which Bailey founded in 2009 alongside fellow Yale graduates Sam Hendel and Jeff Kinsey, monitors real-time events around the world. The New York-based firm provides tools designed to aid with response to crisis situations — tools that can crawl through text, images, videos, audio, and sensor data to generate event briefs.
Dataminr is an unequivocal success in several respects. The company serves over 800 customers, including two-thirds of the Fortune 50, along with 1,500 newsrooms. It’s approaching $200 million in annual recurring revenue, and it has a five-year, $282 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense.
But Dataminr’s history is somewhat clouded with controversy.
According to reports from The Intercept, Dataminr has provided social media surveillance on lawful, pro-abortion rights protests to the U.S. Marshals. Police departments are said to have used Dataminr services for surveillance during Black Lives Matter protests. And Dataminr has been accused of getting critical facts wrong, like the status of American servicemembers in Western Iraq.
Dataminr said that it’s constantly improving its technology, and that it doesn’t offer functionality that would allow a customer to pinpoint a person’s — or protestor’s — location on a map.
“[Our] AI tech steers security across the federal government, OpenAI, humanitarian missions at the United Nations, and security at the world’s biggest events, including the Super Bowl, Olympics, and more,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch via email.
Prior to the new financing round, Dataminr had raised $1.1 billion in venture capital, according to Crunchbase.
Updated 3/19 12:16 p.m. Pacific: The last quote in this story was misattributed to Bailey. In fact, it was provided by a spokesperson. We regret the error.