It’s a tough day for Dataminr, the New York-based big data company that was last valued at $4.1 billion. The company — which uses artificial intelligence and big data algorithms to provide predictive insights on news and other global events — is laying off about 20% of employees today, or about 150 people, TechCrunch has learned. He cites the impact of the economic environment, operational efficiencies and “recent rapid developments of our AI platform,” according to a note from founder and CEO Ted Bailey, which a source shared with us.
In the company-wide memo we’ve seen, employees have been asked to work from home today while they wait for details on whether they will be part of the group of affected employees. The company has been signaling to employees since October that a restructuring is coming, although it’s not clear what areas of the business are affected, nor what the state of the company’s business has been like recently.
The restructuring actions “will place Dataminr on a very strong financial footing moving forward,” Bailey noted in the memo. The company will look to further advance its AI platform and products — especially with the launch of a new AI platform in Q1 that will combine predictive AI and generative AI — but even with the investment that will require, the moves will result in a new AI platform. “It makes today, ‘Dataminr will have several years of cash runway and a near-term path to profitability,'” he continued. (It also likely means it is setting itself up for a scenario in which it will not raise any more outside financing.)
We’ve reached out to Bailey, the company’s media relations team, and several other individuals to confirm the details provided to us by a source (who, unfortunately, appears to be among those affected: Really sorry again, my friend). One of these people, who requested to remain anonymous, also confirmed these details. Meanwhile, there it is now Supports On LinkedIn from Others Hearing the news through the grapevine and looking forward to hiring.
As we were about to publish this, a company spokesperson confirmed this note to us.
Dataminr, founded in 2009, first came to prominence as we saw the emergence of companies using intelligent big data techniques to analyze unstructured data from social media posts and combine it with structured and unstructured data from other sources to understand audience sentiment and sentiment. Other insights.
Dataminr took this concept and applied it directly to insights about world events and other news: Mobile-equipped users used platforms like Twitter as an outlet to post about something they were seeing: Dataminr exploited this, integrated it with other data sources, and was able to capture development as it happened, often Before the rest of the world jumps on the news.
Unsurprisingly, some of the data I collected and how to use it has already been done It sparked controversy Over the years. But it seems that this did not prevent the company from gaining more power. Dataminr has achieved success through key partnerships with companies such as Twitter and clients in government, enterprise, financial services and media.
In the heady funding days of the 2010s, I was able to raise money, a lot of it. It was last valued at $4.1 billion when it raised $475 million in 2021. Overall, it has raised more than $1 billion, with more than 100 investors, including the likes of Fidelity and Morgan Stanley, as well as Venrock, IVP and many more. (Twitter, now called X, was also an investor although it divested its stake some time ago.) Beachbook data It notes that it raised an undisclosed amount of additional funding in two different tranches last year.
Dataminr has always had a large number of “subject matter experts” on staff alongside engineers, sales and customer success specialists. In recent years, and likely this year, the company has actually doubled down on the AI aspect of its technology stack, which is one reason it may see a path forward to downsizing its workforce without impacting the business.