Leading Cloud BI Provider Birst Closes $38 Million Funding Round

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 20, 2013) - Birst Inc., the leader in Cloud BI, today announced it has completed a $38 million investment led by Sequoia Capital. All other existing investors participated in the round and were joined by new investors including Northgate Capital. The new funding will be used to further expand internationally, grow sales and marketing and invest in new product capabilities.

As the only enterprise-caliber Business Intelligence platform born in the Cloud, Birst is less costly and more agile than legacy on-premise BI solutions, but also fully functional, unlike Data Discovery products. This unique value proposition coupled with the company's impressive momentum and increased adoption of Cloud BI by the world's largest companies, served as the cornerstones driving the investment.

In addition to a rapidly growing list of Fortune 500 and midmarket customers, Birst is expanding into new markets in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, continues to grow its partner and technology alliances and has received impressive accolades and recognition by industry experts for its product breadth and depth, high customer satisfaction, and industry-changing Cloud delivery model.

These advantages helped Birst add to its swelling customer ranks in the first half of 2013. Select new customers include American Express, Build.com, Cisco, CSC, InterContinental Hotels Group, Ingram Medical, Johnson Controls, Leapfrog, NCC Media, New South Wales Government, Nippon Life, Reckitt Benckiser (RB), Samsung, Schneider Electric, Sunny Delight, and Virgin HealthMiles. Additionally, Birst continues to expand its indirect embedded business, adding organizations such as FICO, Navis, Omnicell, OpenText, Trimble and Valen to a long list of leading software providers who rely on Birst to power the analytics within their solutions.

"The demand for BI continues to grow and the shift to the Cloud has become unstoppable," said Brad Peters, CEO and Co-founder of Birst. "We already have the industry leading product. This investment furthers our ability to strengthen our solution and will allow us to offer it around the world."

"Companies are drowning in data, and Birst is the lifeline that allows them to surface the information that really matters," said Doug Leone, partner at Sequoia Capital. "We're excited to continue to partner in their success."

Birst continues to expand its global partner ecosystem and in 2013 has added a dozen new additional solution provider partnerships, including firms such as Acumen, Analytics8, Audaxium, CorSource, Eagle Creek, The Pedowitz Group, Projectline, TeleTech and 3Coast. Moreover, new strategic alliances were formed with Amazon, NetSuite, and Marketo.

Gartner recently recognized Birst as a Challenger in the 2013 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms,* noting its ability to provide significant value to organizations. Since the beginning of the year, Birst has received numerous industry accolades, including Dresner Advisory Services: 2013 Wisdom of the Crowds® Market Study, Top Ranked BI Solution and was named the number one Cloud BI vendor for the second year in a row in the Wisdom of Crowds® Cloud BI Survey. Birst was also named a 2013 CODiE Award Finalist for Best Business Intelligence, and included in the 2013 JMP Securities "Hot 100 List" of Best Privately Held Software Companies, the Database Trends and Applications "DBTA 100" The 100 Companies That Matter Most in Data, and both the AlwaysOn OnDemand Top 100 Private Companies and Global 250 Top Private Technology Companies lists.

To access the Gartner 2013 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms report, visit birst.com/gartner.

To learn more about Birst and the benefits it can deliver to your organization, attend a live demonstration, www.birst.com/livedemo.

About Birst
Birst is the only enterprise-caliber Business Intelligence platform born in the cloud. Less costly and more agile than Legacy BI and more powerful than Data Discovery, Birst is engineered with an automated data warehouse and rich, visual analytics, to give meaning to data--all types and sizes. Coupled with the agility of the Cloud, Birst gives business teams the ability to solve real problems. Fast. Find out why Gartner named Birst a Challenger in its most recent BI Magic Quadrant and why more than a thousand businesses rely on Birst for their analytic needs. Learn to think fast at www.birst.com and join the conversation @birstbi.

About the Magic Quadrant
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

*Gartner "2013 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms" by Kurt Schlegel, Rita L. Sallam, Daniel Yuen, Joao Tapadinhas, February 5, 2013.