iguazio opens Apac headquarters in Singapore

• Raised US$48 million total funding; US$33 million in Series B funding
• Working in Apac with several companies including Grab and Equinix

IGUAZIO, a data platform powering continuous analytics and event-driven applications, announced on Dec 6 the opening of its Asia Pacific (Apac) regional headquarters in Singapore.

iguazio announced Singapore-based Grab as a marquee customer in September 2017 and is growing its customers across industries including financial services, automotive, IoT and telecommunications that require real-time data processing, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

In July iguazio raised US$33 million (RM133.9 million) in Series B funding from investors including Verizon Ventures, Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group, Dell Technologies Capital and leading venture capitals, bringing total funding to US$48 million (RM194.76 million).

Funding from the latest round is being used for the company’s global expansion.

“We’re seeing great demand in the Apac region, which will generate a third of global revenues related to data driven applications,” said iguazio CEO Asaf Somekh.

“Our Apac expansion better positions iguazio to work with innovative companies such as Grab which are driven by the growing up-take of digital technologies among consumers and businesses.

“We’ve chosen Singapore as our regional headquarters due to its role as a hub for innovation, opening up a variety of opportunities including cybersecurity, IoT, Smart City, financial services and telematics, making it an ideal location to accelerate iguazio’s Apac operations.”

Grab is one of several customers within a variety of industries that iguazio’s platform is enabling.

iguazio provides Grab with a hybrid/multi-cloud solution through its strategic partnership with global data centre giant Equinix, enabling Grab to manage a continuous stream of data that facilitates real-time matching and booking, surge pricing, optimised driver decision-making and driver effectiveness.

Somekh added, “In financial services, stock exchanges are using our platform to apply AI technologies and move to real-time detection of modern and unfamiliar methods of market manipulation such as ‘spoofing,’ which was difficult under the original rules-based system.

“In a similar way, banks and credit card companies can benefit from accurate, real-time detection in their fraud detection platforms, reducing missed fraud as well as false alarms that block transactions unnecessarily.”

iguazio has also built turnkey solutions to better tackle growing cyber-security threats by developing and deploying algorithmic systems to process large amounts of data in real-time from multiple locations, boosting response time and staying ahead of attackers.

According to McKinsey, companies invested US$26-39 billion in artificial intelligence in 2016 alone, driven by billions of gigabytes of data every day and the need to gain competitive and internal process efficiencies.

IDC predicts that big data solutions, crucial to the deployment of AI and machine learning initiatives, will grow to US$203 billion in 2020.

Founded in 2014, Israel-based startup iguazio simplifies data pipeline complexities while providing a turnkey solution to accelerate the development and deployment of machine learning and artificial intelligence in the enterprise, generating fresh insights in real-time.

iguazio customers use its unified data platform at the edge of the cloud, so their time sensitive applications process and analyse data close to sources such as IoT sensors and mobile devices, while connecting to any cloud vendor and leveraging the cloud’s elastic nature.

iguazio’s APAC headquarters in Singapore will support regional demand by offering training, sales and support to customers and partners.