AI and big data analytics startup Noogata nets $12M

Noogata, a startup developing products for designing, implementing, and deploying big data analytics models at scale, today announced that it raised $12 million. In addition to expanding its workforce, Noogata plans to spend the capital on accelerating its go-to-market efforts as it seeks to acquire new customers.

IDC expects the worldwide big data analytics market will be worth $274.3 billion by 2022. Thanks to AI, enterprises can collect, enrich, and model data insights, forecasts, and recommendations across departments ranging from sales and operations to finance and marketing. But historically, getting this AI into production required in-house development or proprietary out-of-the-box solutions. Until relatively recently, there hasn’t been an easy, no-code way to integrate enterprise data systems with predictive models.

Tel Aviv, Israel-based Noogata, which was founded in 2019 by Assaf Egozi and Oren Raboy, a former senior product manager at Cisco, offers modular preset “AI blocks” engineered to target business needs like managing ecommerce channels and supply chains. The platform leverages no-code, AI-powered frameworks to deliver data insights that companies can embed in reports and dashboards. And because Noogata abstracts away much of the development work, customers don’t have to continuously retrain or audit these AI solutions, the company claims.

“We started Noogata because we believe the data wars won’t be won by data scientists and data engineers alone. We realized we needed a new kind of data operator,” Egozi told VentureBeat via email. “Digitization of everything accelerated in 2020 and data is everywhere — in existing systems inside the enterprise, with partners and along the supply chain. It’s also in new and alternative, external sources like social media, news, weather, research reports, and customer buying patterns and profiles … Enterprises have made great strides in building their data foundations. Now they need to use that foundation to make better, faster decisions.”

Noogata says that the Colgate-Palmolive Company is using its platform to support key sales and marketing functions. Another customer, PepsiCo, is employing the platform across certain farming sites in Europe to help optimize the yield of agricultural raw materials.

“PepsiCo is always looking for ways to leverage breakthrough technology that can help advance our sustainability goals,” PepsiCo senior director David Wilkinson said. “By applying AI to the crop data captured in partnership with farmers, we can gather important insights to further improve decision-making across our agricultural supply chain. The Noogata AI platform is helping us take steps to further optimize crop yield, which helps support farmers’ productivity, profitability, and resiliency.”

Noogata competes with several startups in the big data analytics space. There’s Firebolt, a startup developing a cloud data warehouse for analytics. Leadspace offers a customer data platform that uses AI and big data to help sales and marketing teams build B2B customer profiles. And Dremio, which recently nabbed $135 million, sells tools to help streamline and curate data.

Time will tell whether Noogata can maintain its early market momentum. But Team8, which led the seed funding round announced today with participation from Skylake Capital, is optimistic about the platform’s future. “Noogata is perfectly positioned to address the significant market need for a best-in-class, no-code data analytics platform to drive decision-making,” Team8 managing partner Yuval Shachar said. “The innovative platform replaces the need for internal build, which is complex and costly, or the use of out-of-the-box vendor solutions which are limited. The company’s ability to unlock the value of data through AI is a game-changer. Add to that a stellar founding team, and there is no doubt in my mind that Noogata will be enormously successful.”