Crux Hires Venkat Konatalapalli to Accelerate Data Engineering & Operations for External Data Integration
Venkat joins the company’s senior leadership team as its first SVP of Data Engineering.
4 min read
Jonathan Buckley Jan 24, 2023
With two eight-figure commercial deals, a new round of capital, and over 260 partnerships with leading data and cloud marketplaces in 2022, Crux is rapidly expanding its lead in the external data technology market.
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 24, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Crux, an end-to-end data integration, transformation, and observability solution, has disrupted the external data integration space with record-breaking bookings in 2022, continued recognition by prominent industry partners such as Google, and $50M in additional previously unannounced venture funding led by Two Sigma and the Growth Equity business Goldman Sachs Asset Management (Goldman Sachs) for a total of $157M raised to date.
Company Momentum
Since joining in Spring 2021, CEO Will Freiberg has spearheaded hypergrowth at Crux. In 18 months, Crux has closed $75M in contractual sales commitments, and achieved ARR growth of over 260% during the same period. Additionally, Crux's solution was named an identity and enrichment leader in Snowflake's Modern Data Stack Report in late September. The company has deployed over 50,000 data pipelines, proving its expertise in third-party data automation, and uniquely positioning itself to penetrate the over $40 Billion Total Addressable Market for External Data.
Leadership Team
Crux has assembled an accomplished leadership team with decades of enterprise software experience to build a differentiated SaaS platform to enhance data pipelines and effectively onboard external data at scale. Recent additions to Crux's executive team include SVP of Engineering Ivan Batanov, CMO Gregg Holzrichter, CPO Tina Figueroa, as well as VP of Sales Tony Frey, and VP of Partners & Alliances Jeff Flores, who report into CRO Patrick Ball. These new leaders bring a wealth of enterprise software experience from software companies such as VMware, Cloudera, Informatica, ServiceNow, and Oracle.
Industry Partnerships
Crux's unique approach to external data has been recognized by over 260 data providers–including FactSet, MCSI, and Morningstar– as well as public cloud marketplaces including Google and AWS, and adoption by several of the largest and most discerning data consumers including AllianceBernstein, Capital Group, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and Two Sigma.
Strategic Use Cases Fueling Enterprise Adoption
Recent ESG initiatives and regulations have prompted IT organizations to onboard additional third-party data efficiently in order to ensure compliance. In addition, many large financial institutions and investment managers have begun to centralize data operations, providing data-as-a-service for internal stakeholders. Crux's efficient and automated onboarding of thousands of disparate data sets has enabled leading trading operations on Wall Street to accelerate the ingestion, transformation, and observability of data without hiring new specialized data engineering staff, significantly reducing operational costs while simultaneously focusing efforts on alpha generation.
Jeff Wecker, CTO, Two Sigma, comments: "Since the start of our strategic partnership five years ago, Crux's services have enhanced our own data pipeline capabilities. We see significant growth opportunities for Crux as the need for expanded, accurate data ingestion continues at Two Sigma and across all industries."
Darren Cohen, Global co-head of the Growth Equity business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management, comments: "The pace of adoption and ingestion of third-party data continues to accelerate across asset classes on a global basis, as investors seek competitive differentiation and excess returns. Crux has established a leadership position in this market, through a combination of its scalable, proven technology platform and broad-based data coverage, enabling its clients to rapidly ingest data with tremendous efficiency. We continue to be excited by the company's traction and forward trajectory."
Funding Empowers Crux to Democratize Speed to Insights With New External Data Platform
Since 2017, Crux has been building technologies to support the most stringent use cases for external data. From the unique needs of financial services firms, to the new strains on supply chain professionals, Crux has served the needs of data operations management teams. Now, for the very first time, the company is bringing a self-service SaaS offering to market. The Crux External Data Platform will aid data leaders around the world to unlock the power of third-party data faster than ever before. The enterprise-grade integration, transformation, and observability of external data will now be available to a much wider audience. Coupled with the platform's 24x7 data operations team, Crux now has the strongest offering in the market to help data teams navigate the increasingly complex world of external data. The company is accepting applications for early access to the platform at www.cruxdata.com/access.
"As demand grows worldwide for a platform that can accelerate the realization of value from external datasets by delivering information that is data science- and analytics-ready, I am excited to share the momentum that Crux has been delivering over the past 18 months and our new funding that will continue to fuel our disruption of the space," said Freiberg.
Crux is a cloud-based data integration and operations solution that accelerates the value realization between external and internal data. Crux partners with our customers to ensure they get the data they need, how they need it and where they need it. Crux builds data pipelines at scale and operates over 50K pre-engineered pipelines, delivering public and third-party datasets to the destination of choice. Crux pipelines come with embedded data monitoring, validations, and transformations, and are supported 24x7 by its global operations team. Crux works with enterprise clients and is backed by Two Sigma, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citi, among others.
Bringing together traditional and alternative investments, Goldman Sachs Asset Management provides clients around the world with a dedicated partnership and focus on long-term performance. As the primary investing area within Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), we deliver investment and advisory services for the world's leading institutions, financial advisors and individuals, drawing from our deeply connected global network and tailored expert insights, across every region and market—overseeing more than $2 trillion in assets under supervision worldwide as of December 31, 2022. Driven by a passion for our clients' performance, we seek to build long-term relationships based on conviction, sustainable outcomes, and shared success over time. Goldman Sachs Asset Management invests in the full spectrum of alternatives, including private equity, growth equity, private credit, real estate and infrastructure. Since 2003 the Growth Equity business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management comprising more than 75 individuals has invested over $13 billion in companies led by visionary founders and CEOs. We focus exclusively on investments in growth stage and technology-driven companies spanning multiple industries, including enterprise technology, financial technology, consumer and healthcare. Follow us on LinkedIn.
About Two Sigma
Two Sigma is a financial sciences company, combining rigorous inquiry, data analysis, and invention to solve the toughest challenges in investment management, insurance, securities, private equity, and venture capital. Founded in 2001 by David Siegel and John Overdeck, Two Sigma employs over 1600 creative minds, and has offices in New York, Houston, Portland, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai. For more Information visit www.twosigma.com.
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Venkat joins the company’s senior leadership team as its first SVP of Data Engineering.
Crux ranked 296th on the national list and 39th in the software sector
By making more analytics-ready external datasets accessible, Crux easily meets customers’ data needs and accelerates data onboarding