Last Imply valuation
$1.1B
Series D · May 2022
Last Imply funding round
$100M
Series D · May 2022
Cumulative funding Imply raised
$215M
across 5 funding rounds
Key investors in Imply
Khosla Ventures
Andreessen Horowitz
Bessemer Venture Partners
Geodesic Capital
Tiger Global
Thoma Bravo
About Imply
Imply is a San Francisco-headquartered real-time analytics platform centered on Apache Druid, an open-source database for event data processing. The company enables instant ingestion and sub-second queries for streaming data from user activities, server metrics, and network flows. Imply supports multi-cloud deployments across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Widely used by enterprises for operational business intelligence, Imply powers applications at companies including Cisco and Salesforce. Founded in 2015 by Apache Druid's creators, Imply leads in analytics for motion data, replacing static batch systems with interactive, scalable alternatives. The platform integrates with visualization tools for direct BI solutions and custom analytics apps.
Founded
2015
HQ
San Francisco, CAWebsite
Status
Privately held
Customer focus
B2B
Revenue model
Subscription
Valuation
$1.1B (May 2022)
Imply Valuation
Imply is currently valued at $1.1B, based on its Series D in May 2022.
The $100M round was led by Thoma Bravo, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and OMERS Growth Equity.
Imply's valuation has grown 3.1x from $350M at its Series B in December 2019 to $1.1B in May 2022, across 3 priced rounds.
Imply valuation by funding round
| Date | Stage | Valuation |
|---|---|---|
| May 2022 | Series D | $1.1B |
| Jun 2021 | Series C | $700M |
| Dec 2019 | Series B | $350M |
Imply Funding History
Imply has raised a total of $215M across 5 funding rounds.
Imply's first fundraising round was a $2M seed round in October 2015. The most recent completed round was a $100M Series D in May 2022.
Imply funding rounds
| Date | Stage | Investors | Raised | Valuation | Deal Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2022 | Series D | Thoma Bravo (lead); Bessemer Venture Partners; Khosla Ventures; Andreessen Horowitz; OMERS Growth Equity | $100M | $1.1B | Imply Data, founded by the original creators of the open-source Apache Druid database, develops a real-time analytics platform optimized for high-concurrency queries on streaming and historical data, targeting modern analytics applications across industries. The company serves customers including Salesforce, Atlassian, Reddit, and Intercontinental Exchange, positioning itself to disrupt the $100B database market with Druid-based technology that supports expanded use cases beyond traditional business intelligence. On May 17, 2022, Imply closed a $100 million Series D funding round led by Thoma Bravo, with participation from new investor OMERS Growth Equity and existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Khosla Ventures. The round valued Imply at a $1.1 billion post-money valuation, bringing total funding raised to $215 million and achieving unicorn status. Proceeds are intended to accelerate product development, expand the workforce from 200 to 300 employees, enhance offerings, and drive growth toward a potential IPO. Thoma Bravo partner Robert Sayle highlighted Imply's role in evolving analytics use cases and economic value, emphasizing the firm's software investment expertise. Imply CEO Fangjin Yang noted the exponential expansion of Druid's applicability. This Series D followed a $70 million Series C in 2021 at $700 million valuation, underscoring rapid valuation growth amid rising demand for real-time analytics databases. |
| Jun 2021 | Series C | Bessemer Venture Partners (lead); Geodesic Capital; Khosla Ventures; Andreessen Horowitz; Tiger Global | $70M | $700M | Imply is a real-time analytics platform built on Apache Druid, designed to handle large-scale analytic workloads with high search concurrency, low-latency infrastructure, and the ability to analyze data in motion alongside historical data. The company raised $70 million in its Series C funding round on June 16-17, 2021, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Geodesic Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Tiger Global, bringing total funding to $116 million at that time. This round valued Imply at a post-money valuation of $700 million. Imply serves over 100 enterprise and digital-native customers, including Sift for fraud detection via real-time data ingestion and analysis, positioning it as a leader in 'analytics-in-motion' against traditional analytics tools that struggle with scale, speed, or cost. Customers like Salesforce, Atlassian, Reddit, and Intercontinental Exchange later highlighted its traction in disrupting the database market. Funds were intended to accelerate product development, scale deployments, and capitalize on the evolving cloud data stack favoring specialized real-time tools. |
| Dec 2019 | Series B | Andreessen Horowitz (lead); Geodesic Capital; Khosla Ventures | $30M | $350M | Imply is a data analytics platform built around Apache Druid, an open-source real-time analytics database designed for high-performance querying on large datasets, targeting modern analytics applications at the intersection of streaming data and real-time insights. Founded in 2015 by Druid's creators and headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, Imply serves customers like Twitter, Salesforce, Atlassian, Reddit, and Intercontinental Exchange in the $100B database market. Imply's platform emphasizes ease of deployment across clouds like AWS, GCP, Azure, and private environments, with features like automatic schema discovery, SQL JOIN support, and Druid-as-a-service offerings to simplify real-time analytics app development. The company positioned itself to capitalize on demand for sub-second query performance on streaming data. In December 2019, Imply raised $30 million in its Series B funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Geodesic Capital and Khosla Ventures, at a post-money valuation of $350 million. This brought total funding to around $45 million at the time, funding market expansion and accelerated product development for real-time analytics solutions. Subsequent developments included a $100 million investment in May 2022 led by Thoma Bravo, pushing total funding to $215 million, alongside partnerships like Confluent and Microsoft Azure integrations. |
| Mar 2018 | Series A | Andreessen Horowitz (lead); Khosla Ventures | $13M | - | Imply raised $13.3 million in its Series A round in March 2018, led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Khosla Ventures, to scale the team and enhance product capabilities for real-time data analytics based on Apache Druid. The company, founded in 2015, provides a database platform for building interactive data experiences on streaming and batch data. This round followed a $2 million seed round in October 2015 led by Khosla Ventures to develop the initial product and validate market need. Imply continued raising capital in subsequent rounds, including Series B in December 2019, Series C in June 2021 at $700M valuation, and Series D for $100M in May 2022. |
| Oct 2015 | Seed | Khosla Ventures (lead) | $2M | - | - |
Who has invested in Imply?
7 investors have backed Imply across its funding rounds, including Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Geodesic Capital, Tiger Global and Thoma Bravo.
Lead investors include Thoma Bravo, Bessemer Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures.
Imply Investors
| Investor | HQ | Rounds | Role | First check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco, CA | 5 | Lead | Oct 2015 | |
| San Francisco, CA | 4 | Lead | Mar 2018 | |
| San Francisco, CA | 2 | Participant | Dec 2019 | |
| San Francisco, CA | 2 | Lead | Jun 2021 | |
| Chicago, IL | 1 | Lead | May 2022 | |
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all 7 Imply investors. Start Free Trial | ||||
Benchmark 350K+ Funding Rounds and Disclosed VC Valuation Multiples
Sign up to see data on 350K+ funding rounds and disclosed revenue and EBITDA valuation multiples, from seed, through growth stage, to pre-IPO.
Start Free TrialImply Competitors
Imply competitors include listed companies like Business-intelligence and Plus Alpha Consulting, and private ones like Tealium, MinIO, Nominal and Treasure Data.
| Company | HQ | Status | Revenue | EBITDA | Valuation | Revenue Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Diego, CA | Private | - | - | $1.2B | - | |
| San Francisco, CA | Private | - | - | $1B | - | |
| Austin, TX | Private | - | - | $1B | - | |
| San Francisco, CA | Private | - | - | $1B | - | |
 China | Publicly listed | $389M | $54M | $2B | 5.9x | |
 Japan | Publicly listed | $110M | $36M | $572M | 3.8x |
Imply Public Comps
Imply is still privately-owned, but its public comps include Odine, Beijing Topnew Info, Systena, Rackspace, cyber_Folks, Clarivate, Red Violet, SAKURA Internet, Net263 and Montnets.
| Last FY | EV/Revenue | EV/EBITDA | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | EBITDA | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | |
| $39M | $3M | 29.9x | - | 339.8x | - | |||
| $39M | ($4M) | 29.7x | - | (325.1x) | - | |||
| $607M | $107M | 1.4x | 1.4x | 7.9x | - | |||
| $2.7B | $244M | 1.5x | 1.6x | 17.1x | 15.0x | |||
| $226M | $72M | 5.1x | 4.3x | 16.1x | 13.0x | |||
| $2.5B | $829M | 2.1x | 2.2x | 6.3x | 5.3x | |||
| $90M | $24M | 13.2x | 11.7x | 50.0x | 31.7x | |||
| $227M | $54M | 4.8x | 4.1x | 19.9x | 14.1x | |||
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all Imply competitors and their valuation data. Start Free Trial | ||||||||
Common questions about Imply
| When was Imply founded? | Imply was founded in 2015. |
| Where is Imply headquartered? | Imply is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, United States. |
| Is Imply publicly listed? | No, Imply is a private, VC-backed company. |
| What is Imply's valuation? | Imply was last valued at $1.1B in its Series D in May 2022. |
| How much funding has Imply raised? | Imply has raised $215M across 5 funding rounds. |
| What was Imply's last funding round? | Imply's last funding round was a $100M Series D in May 2022, led by Thoma Bravo. |
| Who are Imply's investors? | Imply's investors include Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Geodesic Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Thoma Bravo, OMERS Growth Equity and Tiger Global. |
| Which companies are comparable to Imply? | Companies comparable to Imply include Tealium, MinIO, Nominal, Treasure Data, Business-intelligence and Plus Alpha Consulting. |
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