Cribl on Tuesday secured $319 million in venture capital funding, potentially setting the vendor up for an IPO.
The financing, Cribl’s Series E round, brings the data management vendor’s total funding to more than $600 million, including $209.8 million in 2021 and $150 million in 2022. In addition, the funding puts Cribl’s total valuation at $3.5 billion, according to the vendor.
New investor GV Management Co. led the round. Michael McBride, a general partner at GV and former chief revenue officer at GitLab, joined Cribl’s board of directors following closing. GIC, CapitalG, IVP and CRV also participated in the round.
The latest funding round follows four years of annual recurring revenue growth of 163% and triple-digit customer growth for five straight years, according to Cribl. Combined, the vendor’s funding and financials put it on track for a potential initial public stock offering, according to Andy Thurai, an analyst at Constellation Research.
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“I am not sure [Cribl is] ready for IPO yet, but that is the direction they are heading,” he said.
Torsten Volk, an analyst at TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group, likewise noted that Cribl’s financial growth combined with having reached its Series E funding round suggests that the vendor’s next capital raise could be through an IPO.
And it could be a significant one.
“The IPO is the next logical step for Cribl,” he said. “If they can sustain their revenue growth momentum, while capturing neighboring markets, they will achieve a massive valuation when going public.”
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Based in San Francisco, Cribl is a 2017 startup that specializes in observability of IT and security data.
Cribl Stream, the vendor’s flagship platform, sits between the data ingestion and storage phases of a data pipeline and enables customers to observe and transform data. Additional offerings include Cribl Edge for logging data and Cribl Search for examining data before it’s processed.
Clint Sharp
Former partner Splunk in 2022 accused Cribl of copyright and patent infringement. The result was a lengthy legal battle that ended in April 2024, when a jury found Cribl guilty, but awarded Splunk just $1. Cribl founders Clint Sharp, the vendor’s CEO; Dritan Bitincka; and Ledion Bitincka all came from Splunk.
Cribl competitors include specialists such as Confluent, Cloudera and tech giants such as AWS, Google and Microsoft.
Bucking trends
Should Cribl plot an IPO in the near future, it would be going against recent history.
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Tech IPOs, including data management and analytics vendors, weren’t uncommon through 2021. In fact, data platform vendor Snowflake’s 2020 IPO set a record for tech vendors by raising $3.4 billion. Meanwhile, vendors including MariaDB, Qlik, Pyramid Analytics, SAS and ThoughtSpot publicly expressed plans to explore going public, with Qlik going so far as to file initial paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in January 2022 to begin the IPO process.
But then market conditions changed.
All three major stock market indexes — the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq composite and S&P 500 — dropped at the start of 2022, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq falling off more than 25% into the spring. Tech giants AWS, Google and Microsoft all suffered steep declines in their stock prices, as did more specialized vendors such as Nvidia and MicroStrategy.
The indexes have since recovered, as have many individual stock prices. However, heading into 2024, the climate for IPOs remained worse than it was entering 2022, and most of the data management and analytics vendors that had expressed interest in going public remain private.
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One exception is MariaDB, which went public in December 2022 at just over $4 per share, dipped below $1 per share the following May and is now hovering at just over $0.50 per share.
Should an IPO be Cribl’s next foray into the capital markets, it would take time for all paperwork to be filed and due diligence to be done, which would give the receptiveness for IPOs further time to recover.
“We’ve been operating with the mindset of a pre-IPO company for a while, and are focused on growing efficiently and maintaining our leadership in the IT and security data space,” said Abby Strong, Cribl’s chief marketing officer. “Financial milestones, including [Tuesday’s] funding, are exciting for us, but what really matters is delivering products and services that transform the lives of our users.”
Before going public, Cribl’s goal is to be cash-flow positive by the end of 2025, she continued.
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“Going public is simply another step on our journey that we will consider when it makes sense,” Strong said.
Should Cribl go public, it wouldn’t be the first trend the vendor goes against.
Just as the IPO market evaporated in 2022, venture capital funding similarly tightened as the overall markets dipped, driven by fears of a recession, rising interest rates, inflation, the onset of war between Russia and Ukraine, and repeated supply chain disruptions.
This $319 million is a vote of confidence based on Cribl’s ability to generate a lot of revenue faster than 99% of startups. This speaks to both Cribl’s technology and their ability to position and continuously develop a product portfolio that companies want. Torsten VolkAnalyst, Enterprise Strategy Group
Nine data vendors raised more than $100 million in 2021, including data streaming specialist Confluent’s $828 million round in June of that year. In early 2022, four more raised more than $100 million.
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In the two years since, only Databricks and a handful of others have been able to attract more than $100 million in any single funding round. Funding appears to finally be returning to the data sector in 2024, with database vendor Aerospike and analytics specialist Sigma Computing each raising more than $100 million, and others attracting smaller amounts.
Still, funding is not flowing as freely as it was before spring 2022. Cribl’s $319 million funding round, therefore, demonstrates that investors are bullish on the vendor’s future, according to Volk.
“This $319 million is a vote of confidence based on Cribl’s ability to generate a lot of revenue faster than 99% of startups,” he said. “This speaks to both Cribl’s technology and their ability to position and continuously develop a product portfolio that companies want.”
Cribl’s Strong similarly said the vendor’s Series E round represents an affirmation of Cribl’s technology and future growth potential. By focusing on IT and security, Cribl is addressing a need that has resulted in significant revenue.
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“We’ve built a strong foundation by focusing on solving … pressing problems in IT and security,” she said. “That’s resonating with investors. In an environment where funding is tough, our approach — tackling meaningful, unsolved issues — has given us an edge.”
Investment plans
While Cribl’s latest funding round helps put it in position for an eventual IPO, the vendor has more immediate plans for the cash.
Cribl’s plans include accelerating product development, expanding its global presence and investing in its infrastructure to support that expansion.
Regarding product development, real-time query and analysis is one focal point, according to Strong. Another is making Cribl’s tools more composable so that customers can choose which capabilities fit their needs and develop their own deployments. Still another is adding new partnerships and integrations to broaden the vendor’s ecosystem.
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Thurai noted that the end of the Splunk lawsuit seemingly freed Cribl to make aggressive moves. Since May, the vendor has unveiled a series of new partnerships, introduced new capabilities and now added substantial funding.
“For the longest time, they had a dark cloud hanging over their head,” Thurai said. “[Now] they are firing on all cylinders. … Given the dark cloud [has been] lifted, they could go big and make some news.”
News such as an acquisition, Volk suggested.
He noted that Cribl has already proven its financial prowess by becoming one of the fastest companies ever to reach $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Expansion into new markets such as application and infrastructure observability and data observability makes sense. One quick means of expansion is to buy another company.
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“Now they are in the position of making strategic investments to capture neighboring markets, most likely through acquisition,” Volk said. “They could make an acquisition that not only opens up new revenue streams, but also lends Cribl some credibility in the open source community.”
AI could be another area of investment, he continued.
While many data vendors have invested heavily in developing generative AI applications that simplify the use of their tools, and added other capabilities designed to help customers develop their own generative AI applications, Cribl has largely stuck to more traditional product development.
In June, the vendor unveiled Cribl Copilot, an AI-powered assistant — but unlike other data vendors, such as Alteryx and Informatica, the company has not infused AI throughout its platform. Anomaly and trend detection could be ways for Cribl to add more AI, according to Volk. So could developing a recommendation engine and automation capabilities that enable users to create efficient data pipelines for generative AI models.
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“In addition to strategic acquisitions, Cribl could use its funds to build out a strong AI team,” Volk said.
Eric Avidon is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial and a journalist with more than 25 years of experience. He covers analytics and data management.
SAP and data management vendor Collibra are putting some teeth into a partnership that was first unveiled more than a year ago.
The two vendors are launching new integrations between Collibra’s data governance, data catalog and metadata management capabilities and SAP Datasphere, a data service that integrates data from sources across the organization.
Collibra has partnered with SAP since Datasphere debuted in March 2023. Now, Collibra’s data intelligence tools are integrated into the SAP Analytics Cloud business intelligence (BI) system, according to the companies. This new integration is generally available. Additional Collibra integrations to support SAP Datasphere models will be generally available later this year.
The expanded partnership and direct integrations signify an advance in data management capabilities for customers, which is particularly important as trusted and well-governed data becomes increasingly necessary for AI and advanced analytics, according to analysts.
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Addressing data challenges
Collibra and SAP decided to broaden their relationship based on projects and discussions with common customers, according to Mike Robertson, vice president of technology partnerships at Collibra.
“We had a number of conversations with our joint customers to understand how we could partner to help them with their data challenges,” Robertson said. “The partnership has been built from this foundation, the importance of data and helping our customers do more with the data they have.”
Collibra is working with other enterprise technology vendors to help companies deal with data management challenges, he said.
“Our customers have complex data landscapes, and we are working to find ways to make it easier for them to address challenges around governance, quality and management of their data assets,” Robertson said. “We have strong relationships with cloud providers, BI and visualization partners, data lakes and data warehouse, master data management and AI data platform partners.”
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Focus on data trust and governance
The focused integration of Collibra and SAP Datasphere provides data management benefits to customers, according to Jayesh Chaurasia, an analyst at Forrester Research.
For one, it will bolster SAP’s focus on data governance and help to ensure that all data — including data that’s used for AI — is trustworthy and well governed, Chaurasia said.
Collibra’s data governance capabilities enable SAP to offer customers a more comprehensive platform that provides accurate, governed data from various sources and lays a strong foundation for effective AI deployment, he said.
“It supports a unified and consolidated view of data assets across SAP and non-SAP environments,” Chaurasia said.
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SAP has always been a tough platform to extract the metadata from, so this integration makes that simpler and provides an edge to Collibra. Jayesh ChaurasiaAnalyst, Forrester Research
This, in turn, will provide business users easy access to trusted and governed data, which could lead to better decision-making.
“It ensures that AI models are fed with high-quality data and enables business users to leverage AI insights effectively without deep technical expertise,” Chaurasia said.
Direct integrations always help in connecting to systems and gathering the metadata, he added.
“SAP has always been a tough platform to extract the metadata from, so this integration makes that simpler and provides an edge to Collibra,” Chaurasia said.
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The expanded integration shows signs of progress that the two vendors are beginning to deliver on the promise when the partnership began in 2023, specifically for the highly regulated customers they share, according to Doug Henschen, an analyst at Constellation Research.
It will help joint customers to not only securely access and harness data from across distributed data sources using SAP Datasphere, but also to classify, improve discoverability, track lineage, and ensure policy-based enforcement of rules and regulations using Collibra, he said.
“It’s a synergistic partnership that makes sense, particularly as organizations seek to securely and appropriately use data to power new AI initiatives,” Henschen said.
Eric Avidon, a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial, contributed to this report.
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Jim O’Donnell is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial who covers ERP and other enterprise applications.
X is reportedly reversing course after weeks of refusing to comply with conditions set by the Brazilian Supreme Court that would allow it to operate in the country again. According to , the company’s lawyers said in a Friday court filing that X has named a legal representative in Brazil as demanded by justice Alexandre de Moraes and removed accounts that the judge had identified as a threat to democracy, along with paying the fines it owed. But, the publication also reports that the Brazil Supreme Court has said X did not submit all the necessary paperwork, and now has five days to do so.
The paperwork X failed to submit is that which would prove it formally appointed a legal representative in Brazil, as required by Brazilian law, according to . X named Rachel de Oliveira Conceicao as its new legal representative in the filing on Friday. The company has been working to restore service to users in Brazil after it was blocked at the end of August, and briefly came back online earlier this week using Cloudflare’s DNS. But, it said that this was “inadvertent and temporary.” In a statement, at the time, “While we expect the platform to be inaccessible again in Brazil soon, we continue efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil.”
Brazil has of nearly $1 million if they do not comply with the ban in the country. Justice Moraes also made it so users in Brazil could be fined roughly $8,900 to access X. The company’s latest move is a step toward resolving the issue and potentially bringing X back to Brazil legally.
One of India’s largest startups, budget hotel company Oyo, has reached a deal to acquire G6 Hospitality, which operates Motel 6.
Oyo says it will pay Blackstone Real Estate $525 million in an all-cash transaction. The acquisition also includes the Studio 6 extended stay brand and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.
The Indian startup opened its first U.S. location in 2019 and now operates more than 320 hotels across 35 states. Oyo is dramatically expanding its North American footprint by acquiring Motel 6 — arguably the best-known budget hotel brand in the country, with a franchise network of around 1,500 locations in the United States and Canada.
“This acquisition is a significant milestone for a startup company like us to strengthen our international presence,” said Oyo International CEO Gautum Swaroop in a statement. He added that Motel 6 will “continue to operate as a separate entity.”
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Founded in 2012, SoftBank-backed Oyo’s was valued at $10 billion in 2019, but has struggled in recent years due to pandemic-related challenges, as well as criticism over practices such as offering rooms from unavailable or unlicensed hotels.
Over the summer, TechCrunch reported on a new funding round that saw the company’s valuation fall to $2.5 billion — less than its total capital raised. (Oyo has denied reporting about its lowered valuation.)
Motel 6, meanwhile, was founded in 1962. It popularized the budget hotel concept (rooms originally cost $6 a night) and was eventually acquired by Blackstone for $1.9 billion in 2012.
Meta is holding its annual Connect developers conference next week, and it’s going to showcase a bunch of expected and perhaps some surprise new VR and AR hardware — alongside what might be a heavy Meta AI showcase featuring the company’s newest Llama large language model and image generator in apps like WhatsApp.
And as Meta sunsets custom tools for AR filters, we could end up seeing a whole new set of developer tools designed to harness generative AI experiences. Perhaps it will all come together in Meta’s next big push into its alternative reality ideas (and namesake) in the metaverse, including significant Horizon Worlds updates.
However, the most anticipated products expected to appear during the conference are the successor to the Meta Quest 3 and perhaps updates to Meta and Raybans, which are very cool smart glasses. Hopefully, we’ll see the rumored “Orion” AR glasses, but we will need to catch the Connect keynote to find out.
When is Meta Connect 2024
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Meta’s Connect developers conference this year starts on Wednesday, September 25th, 2024, and ends the next day on Thursday, September 26th. The conference will kick off with the Connect keynote, headlined by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, at 1PM ET / 10AM PT, followed immediately by a Developer keynote at 2PM ET / 11AM PT. Meta has a full program schedule on the Connect site.
How to watch Meta Connect 2024
The Meta Connect keynote will stream live on the official Meta Connect website. If you’re a Quest headset user, you can also watch it on Horizon Worlds. Following the keynotes, you can participate in live developer sessions for deep dives on AI and mixed reality on Facebook.
What to expect at Meta Connect 2024
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Expect a cheaper Quest VR headset.Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge
The most exciting thing about Meta is that it holds the keys to the closest thing to mainstream VR headsets with the Quest 2 and Quest 3. The latter, however, started at a price that was too high ($500 compared to the now $200 Quest 2) and did not have a very sharp AR video passthrough. Now we’re expecting a cheaper version, the Quest “3S,” that might sell for as cheap as $299.99, according to leaks.
Meta also has other new VR headsets in the pipeline, including a new Quest 4 for 2026 and something at the pro level designed for spatial computing internally dubbed “La Jolla” for 2027. Recent reports suggest plans for the latter might now be on ice, especially as Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro struggles to gain traction. We may not see these models specifically at Connect, but other models in the pipeline may show up.
Can Meta make an even cooler pair of smart glasses?Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
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Expect an update on the futuristic Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses at Connect too. The current glasses look clean and aren’t too chonky, but they’re ripe for an iterative update, even if no AR capabilities are coming. The glasses respond to your commands with Meta AI, so expect fresh chatbot assistant experiences on the way.
Meta is also working on new mixed reality glasses internally dubbed “Orion,” which we can expect at least a glimpse of. Snap recently let us wear its new AR Spectacles, but those are developer-only, and a former Snap engineer on the project called them “obviously bad.” Hopefully what we see of Orion is a lot more interesting.
Along with Meta’s VR strategy comes expectations of new software and experiences, including the future of games on Quest. Right now, there are questions about what Meta is doing for games: it’s shutting down the Ready at Dawn game studio that made immersive 3D games like Echo VR, while casual games like Wordle are rolling in. Meanwhile, Meta recently launched an app that lets you play console games on the headset through HDMI.
Sometimes, you get your hands on a piece of hardware that just feels right. For me, that was the Logitech G502 Lightspeed Wireless – and now that mouse is reaching the end of its life, and while I won’t be hosting an actual Viking funeral for it, I genuinely am a little upset.
A fairly high-end gaming mouse with a comfortable ergonomic design and understated RGB lighting, the G502 Lightspeed Wireless has been my trusty desktop companion for more than five years, and is only just starting to show its age; specifically, the left-click switch is giving out, still registering most clicks but rendering click-and-drag operations almost impossible.
As you can probably tell from this image, my own G502 Lightspeed Wireless has seen better days. (Image credit: Future)
It’s fair to say that I’ve definitely put this mouse through the wringer over the past half-decade. Not only have I used it to put literally thousands of hours into all manner of games, but it’s also been my daily driver for work ever since the pandemic shifted me into working from home. It’s survived countless hours of frantic clicking, scrolling, and at-desk lunches (no, I’m not a ‘tidy desk, tidy mind’ sort of person).
It’s not an exaggeration to say that I love this mouse. It’s incredibly comfy under the hand thanks to the curved shape and thumb rest, and the underside features two magnetic panels that can be removed to add tiny metal weights to the interior – in other words, a little tweaking can create the perfect weight distribution for any user.
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It’s also just a good gaming mouse in general: a 25,600 DPI sensor, long battery life, 1ms latency thanks to the proprietary Lightspeed USB dongle, and 11 remappable buttons all make it a stellar choice for any genre of PC game.
Consistency above all else
As heartbroken as I might be that my reliable gaming companion is beginning to fade from glory, there’s a definite silver lining here.
See, Logitech does something that I wish more PC hardware companies would do: a certain ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach to product design, meaning that I can still buy the exact same G502 Lightspeed Wireless mouse that I originally purchased over five years ago. Plenty of companies would’ve made the original product redundant in that time period, replacing it twice or three times over with new models (looking at you, Razer).
Hell, Logitech has been using the same design for its mainstream 1080p webcam – the Logitech C920 – for more than a decade, with only some minor generational improvements over the years. There’s a reason that cam still sits in the top spot of our best webcams ranking, is what I’m saying.
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Seriously, look at this beautiful little device. Never change, C920. (Image credit: Future)
The G502 Lightspeed has been replaced in our best gaming mouse list by the newer, shinier Logitech G502 X Plus, but it’s still the same excellent mouse at heart – and gamers on a budget can always pick up the G502 Hero, which packs a lot of the great design and features found in my favorite mouse into a more wallet-friendly package.
But you can’t have too much of a good thing, so while I’m currently rocking a temporary replacement from NZXT, I can’t wait to take my paycheck to the Logitech G Store to pick up an identical replacement for my beloved G502 Lightspeed Wireless. There’s only one problem, and that’s the price: $99.99 / £139.99 (around AU$150, but it’s no longer available from Logitech in Australia). Why’s it so expensive in the UK, Logitech?
I guess I’ll be waiting for a Black Friday deal… unless the kind folks at Logitech read this and take pity on a poor tech journalist. Keep your fingers crossed for me, readers!
The back of Neil Harbisson’s head and his sound generator
Sideways Film
Cyborg: A documentary Carey Born First Born Films In UK cinemas on 20 September; US to be announced
Neil Harbisson studied music composition at Dartington College of Arts in the UK. He was born with achromatopsia, so is unable to perceive colour of any kind. Not one to ignore a challenge, in 2003 Harbisson recruited product designer Adam Montandon to build him a head-mounted rig that turns colours into musical notes that he can listen to via earphones.
Clint Sharp
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