Open source business intelligence platform Lightdash has raised $11 million Series A to accelerate the adoption of self-serve data analytics for modern teams.
As businesses create unprecedented volumes of data, the demand for self-serve BI tools – which allow anyone to access and analyse data and optimise business performance - has ballooned.
However, legacy BI platforms silo data and business logic, don’t integrate with other tools and require extensive SQL and data skills to use.
Founded in 2021 by CEO Hamzah Chaudhary and CTO Oliver Laslett, Lightdash offers a developer workflow that leverages best practices from software engineering, native integrations with modern tools, and a user-friendly approach for non-technical stakeholders.
Data teams use Lightdash’s developer tools, with fully-automated testing, version control and staging environments, to speed up their workflow and manage BI more like software.
As well as natively integrating with all essential parts of the data stack, from data warehouses through to transformation tools like dbt, Lightdash also connects with tools such as Slack, Teams, and Google Sheets. This allows non-technical end users to safely and reliably self-serve data insights without needing to know SQL. Being open-source, Lighdash also gives businesses full control and flexibility around how they deploy and use the platform.
More than 80 per cent of Lightdash’s daily active users are non-technical team members answering their own data questions.
Since raising its seed round in 2022, Lightdash usage has grown 50x, with almost two queries being answered every second on the platform. In 2023, Lightdash also launched its first commercial product, Lightdash Cloud which resulted in 7x revenue growth in less than 12 months.
As well as announcing today’s investment, Lightdash is launching a new, context-specific AI analyst service that is trained to the specific needs and context of each sub-team within an organisation, whether marketing, finance, or HR. This AI analyst will allow specific teams to ask questions of their own data in natural language and receive curated insights relevant to their work, with no need for any data knowledge at all.
Hamzah Chaudhary, founder and CEO of Lightdash, said:
“At Lightdash, we want to build self-serve tools that empower data teams to become superheroes. We’ve received incredible feedback on the platform over the last two years, especially since the launch of Lightdash Cloud, and we’re looking forward to continuing to grow our user base and build more powerful BI features like our AI analyst service in the future.
We’re excited to continue partnering with Accel and our new investors, who are joining the round on our journey to making all data-driven decisions accessible, actionable, and consistent.”
Existing investor Accel led the round, with participation from Operator Partners, Shopify Ventures and existing investor Y Combinator as well as angel investors including Michael Grinch (Founder and CEO, WorkOS) and Shuo Wang (Co-founder and CRO, Deel).
Andrei Brasoveanu, partner at Accel, said:
“Lightdash has demonstrated incredible growth since we partnered with the company for its seed round two years ago, and it has clearly become the most innovative BI platform on the market.
Building effective, powerful self-serve BI has been a long-term challenge for data teams of all sizes. We believe the approach Lightdash is taking, providing companies with the tools to make their data teams 10x more productive rather than cut them out completely, is unique and impressive.”
Tiantian Feng, Head of Shopify Ventures, said:
“This investment reflects our commitment to open source and empowering fast-scaling merchants with the best tools to run their business. We look forward to seeing Lightdash build the next generation of best practices in BI and become an integral part of their customers’ everyday data workflows, for data teams, business teams, end users, and beyond.”
The funding will accelerate product development, building additional technical features and functionality, and to expand Lightdash’s developer teams in the US and Europe.
Lead image: Lightdash. Photo: uncredited.
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