AI-powered unstructured data analytics startup Zilliz closed its latest Series B funding round with a $43 million investment led by Hillhouse Capital. Additional investors include TrustBridge Capital, Pavillion Capital, as well as continued participation from existing investors 5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Venture Capital) and Yunqi Partners. This marks the largest single Series B funding round for an open-source infrastructure software company to date.
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Zilliz has raised over $53 million since its 2017 launch, and will use the latest round of funding to drive international workforce expansion, sustain and expand contributions to the open-source data science software ecosystem, advance development of enterprise-grade cloud services, and spur global adoption of AI-powered technology for unstructured data processing and analysis.
“Unstructured data accounts for roughly 80% of all data, but only 1% gets analyzed due to processing complexities,” said Charles Xie, Founder and CEO of Zilliz. “Structured data, such as numerical values and text, has been efficiently handled by computers for decades. Unstructured data, things like images, videos, user behavior, chemical structures, and gene sequences, is far more ubiquitous.
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However, few tools are available to extract meaning from it. As digital transformation accelerates, unlocking the value of unstructured data will become progressively more essential. Our overarching goal at Zilliz is to utilize technology like heterogeneous computing and artificial intelligence to give people access to previously inaccessible insights.”
Xie continued, “Unstructured data processing and analysis has been pivotal to growing adoption of artificial intelligence worldwide, and we are committed to sustained investment in this space. We’ve found building software under the open-source model has eliminated national boundaries, brought a powerful network effect, and made analyzing unstructured data easier and more accessible for developers everywhere. Beginning late 2021, Zilliz will provide public, cloud-based unstructured data services that emphasize security, reliability, ease of use, and affordability.”
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