Feature
A startup that promises to be "world's premier real time data platform" just got a big chunk of change.
Redwood City, Calif.-based Banjo closed on a $100 million Series C round led by Softbank, alongside BlueRun Ventures. This brings Banjo's total funding to $121 million, according to Crunchbase.
The company landed a $16 million series B in March 2014 and its $5 million series A in August 2010 (BlueRun Ventures participated in both of those, too.)
Banjo analyzes data about events and breaking news in real time for news publishers and other organizations.
As It Happens
Damien Patton, CEO of Banjo, said in an email that his company is "building a crystal ball" that helps customers "see and know virtually everything happening across the globe the moment it happens."
Patton said the funding will help make the company's vision "to build the ultimate crystal ball" a reality. He continued:
By organizing the planet’s social signals by location, we’ve changed the game for our customers, and we are just getting started. Now Banjo is moving far beyond social signals. Our technology will know and understand everything, about any location, at any time, creating value for everyone, from individuals to corporations to continents."
Patton claimed Banjo connects the world’s disparate real time data streams and harnesses them into "one unified source of unmatched insights." He said it can help organizations and people with faster emergency response, safer driving conditions, smarter marketing decisions and more efficient use of energy among more.
"We believe we are tackling the most complex data science challenge in the world and that today's top data scientists and engineers will be eager to join our team to help solve it," he said.
"We already have some of the top minds in data science, but to stay on target we need to add more. Ultimately, our team will bring order to the chaos of global data and unlock its power for everyone."
Patton said Banjo is building something "that's never existed."
"Banjo is in an interesting space, bringing together the ideas of big data, social, local, mobile and trying to derive value from that combination for both consumers and businesses," said Nikesh Arora, Softbank's vice chairman and a former Google's exec.
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Arora said Patton "thinks big," and called the company something with "the potential to be very interesting."
