MindsDB Raises $16.5M from Benchmark to put machine learning into more applications

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 7, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- MindsDB, the most widely used open source applied machine learning (ML) platform in the world, today announced a $16.5M Series A investment from Benchmark.

MindsDB was built to dramatically speed up the process of building AI powered applications. With more than 13,000 GitHub Stars and 70+ technology and data integrations, MindsDB has become one of the fastest growing developer platforms.

"Over the past 20 years, we've seen important revolutions in the world of SaaS, from the rise of web applications, to the growth of mobile apps. Now, it's time for the next revolution in the world of technology: the reinvention of all the systems we use on a daily basis, like email, calendars, CRMs, ERPs, CMSs, telehealth, office documents, etc, all with AI capacities at their core," said Jorge Torres, Co-Founder and CEO of MindsDB. "This reality is rapidly changing the way we interact with technology and with MindsDB, developers can rapidly create the next wave of AI-centered applications that will transform the way we live and work."

This new investment follows MindsDB's latest integrations with Hugging Face and OpenAI, which allow anyone to easily bring state-of-the-art natural language processing and generative AI models into their database with only a few lines of SQL. With Hugging Face, developers can access pre-trained NLP models and apply them to their own data for use cases such as advanced text classification, sentiment analysis, emotion detection, translation, and more. With the OpenAI integration, developers can customize to their data the power of cutting edge generative AI models including GPT-3, Codex, and DALL·E.

Benchmark is known to invest in, and work alongside, entrepreneurs building startups into transformational companies. The firm has also been recognized for its commitment to open source with investments including Confluent, Elastic, Cockroach Labs, Docker, Airbyte, Clickhouse, MySQL, TimeScaleDB, Red Hat, and many others. Benchmark General Partner Chetan Puttagunta is joining the board of directors, bringing his deep expertise and track record as an early investor and board member in open source leaders including Elastic, Mulesoft (acquired by Salesforce for $6.5B), and MongoDB.

"Today, there's tremendous interest in the developer community to implement and integrate machine learning into their applications, but the process is complicated and expensive," said Chetan Puttagunta, general partner at Benchmark. "MindsDB is enabling developers from small startups to the biggest enterprises in the world by enabling developers to quickly and efficiently run ML models of their choosing with the database of their choosing. This approach has already made MindsDB the de facto choice for developers, and I'm thrilled to work alongside Jorge and Adam and the rest of the MindsDB team."

About MindsDB

MindsDB enables developers to create the next wave of AI-centered applications that will transform the way we live and work. MindsDB was founded in 2017 by Adam Carrigan (COO) and Jorge Torres (CEO) and is backed with over $24M in total funding from Benchmark, Walden Catalyst Ventures, YCombinator, OpenOcean, the venture fund launched by the creators of MySQL and MariaDB, SpeedInvest, MMC and the University of California Berkeley SkyDeck fund. MindsDB is also recognized by Forbes as one of America's most promising AI companies (2021) and by Gartner as a Cool Vendor for Data and AI (2022). To see how MindsDB can help you visit www.mindsdb.com or follow us @MindsDB.