DataStax
Unicorn exit · $1.6BAcquiredSan Francisco, US · Founded 2010 · 19 known investors
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DataStax provides enterprise-grade database infrastructure and AI development tools, including Astra DB (a NoSQL vector database built on Apache Cassandra), Hyper-Converged Database for on-premises deployments, and Langflow (an open-source low-code platform for building generative AI applications).
Also known as DataStax, an IBM company · DataStax, Inc. · Riptano
Founders & leadership
DataStax was founded in 2010 by Jonathan Ellis.
Board
Investors · 19
Also in the syndicate · 3
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements$149.6M disclosed across 3 of 4 rounds · 2014–2025
- $6MSeed roundOct 2025 · 2 sources
Blumberg Capital (lead), Gradient Ventures (lead)
Source ↗
▶$37.6MraisedMay 2021 · 10 investors · Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- Andy VitusDirector
- Eric ChinDirector
- Jonathan EllisDirector
- Holger StaudeDirector
- Kelly BattlesDirector
- Jim BaumDirector
- Chet KapoorExecutive Officer, Director
- John VrionisDirector
- Offering amount
- $37.6M
- Amount sold
- $37.6M
- First sale
- May 2021
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Delaware
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
▶$106MraisedSep 2014 · 24 investors · Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- Jim BaumDirector
- Clint SmithExecutive Officer
- Billy BosworthExecutive Officer, Director
- Eric ChinDirector
- Randy GottfriedDirector
- John VrionisDirector
- Jonathan EllisExecutive Officer, Director
- Andy VitusDirector
- Dennis WolfExecutive Officer
- Offering amount
- $110M
- Amount sold
- $106M
- Finders' fees
- $1.8M
- Placement agents
- Goldman, Sachs & Co.
- First sale
- Aug 2014
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Delaware, 2010
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
Source: SEC EDGAR Form D. Amounts as filed; amended filings shown once at their latest values.
Valuation · disclosed
Disclosed eventsSource: SEC prospectus filings, and round valuations the company or its investors disclosed — follow each entry's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026DataStax, Inc. is a data management company whose products are built on the open-source Apache Cassandra NoSQL database. Its core commercial offerings are Astra DB, a cloud database-as-a-service with vector search and multi-model support (tabular, search and graph data); Hyper-Converged Database (HCD), a self-managed multi-model database built on Cassandra 4.0 for on-premises and private-cloud deployments that replaces DataStax Enterprise (DSE) workloads; DataStax Enterprise (DSE), the on-premises distribution of Cassandra with added operational reliability, monitoring, security, graph, search and analytics capabilities; and Astra Streaming, a messaging and event-streaming cloud service based on Apache Pulsar. Supporting products include Mission Control for cluster management, OpsCenter for DSE monitoring, Stargate (an open-source data API gateway), K8ssandra (Cassandra on Kubernetes), and a range of drivers, connectors (Kafka, Pulsar, RabbitMQ) and migration tools such as Astra DB Sideloader.
On the AI side, DataStax maintains Langflow, an open-source, Python-based low-code environment for prototyping, building and deploying retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and multi-agent AI applications, designed to work across models, APIs and databases. Earlier AI-related initiatives include LangStream (open-sourced in September 2023), RAGStack (a commercial RAG offering based on LangChain and Astra DB vector search, announced November 2023), Luna ML (built on acquired Kaskada technology), and Astra Block, an Ethereum blockchain data service delivered as part of Astra DB.
Following IBM's acquisition, DataStax capabilities spanning Astra DB, HCD and Langflow are being brought to IBM's watsonx portfolio: Astra DB and HCD add vector and knowledge-embedding capabilities to watsonx.data's NoSQL database and are delivered as "DataStax with IBM watsonx.data Premium edition," while Langflow integrates with watsonx Orchestrate as middleware for AI application development.
Founding story
Jonathan Ellis and Matt Pfeil founded the company as Riptano in Austin, Texas in April 2010 after leaving Rackspace, where they had worked with Apache Cassandra — a NoSQL database originally developed at Facebook for large data sets across multiple servers and released as an Apache open-source project in 2008. The founders later renamed the company DataStax and relocated its headquarters to Santa Clara, California.
Business model
DataStax commercializes open-source data infrastructure, selling managed cloud services (Astra DB serverless, Astra Streaming) alongside self-managed enterprise software licences and support for DSE and Hyper-Converged Database, with published pricing tiers ranging from free trials and prototype use up to enterprise plans. Open-source projects such as Langflow, Stargate and K8ssandra serve as adoption channels for the commercial products. Since the IBM acquisition, offerings are also packaged with IBM watsonx (for example, DataStax with IBM watsonx.data Premium edition), and DSE and OpsCenter downloads are distributed through IBM Fix Central.
Subscription and consumption-based revenue from cloud database and streaming services plus enterprise software subscriptions and support. In its fiscal 2023 first quarter the company reported Astra DB sales growing 350% year over year and accounting for more than half of new annual recurring revenue.
Traction
As of June 2022 DataStax reported roughly 800 customers in more than 50 countries and more than 800 employees, with customers including The Home Depot, Verizon and Capital One. Astra DB sales grew 350% year over year in fiscal 2023 Q1 and represented more than 50% of new annual recurring revenue. Langflow has surpassed 100,000 GitHub stars and is used by tens of thousands of developers.
Latest developments
IBM completed its acquisition of DataStax on May 28, 2025, after announcing intent on February 25, 2025. DataStax now operates as an IBM company, integrating Astra DB and HCD with watsonx.data (delivered as DataStax with IBM watsonx.data Premium edition) and Langflow with watsonx Orchestrate; CEO Chet Kapoor said the mission remains empowering enterprises and developers to build and scale mission-critical applications. Product updates include HCD 2.0, Astra DB Sideloader for low-downtime migration, and hybrid search combining vector search with reranking. DSE and OpsCenter downloads have moved to IBM Fix Central.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
DataStax is the principal commercial vendor behind Apache Cassandra and positions itself in the NoSQL, vector-database and real-time data-for-AI markets; Astra DB has been cited as a Forrester Leader for NoSQL vector search on cloud. Langflow reports more than 100,000 GitHub stars and tens of thousands of developer users. IDC characterized IBM's acquisition of DataStax as building data-for-AI infrastructure to complement the watsonx portfolio.
Positioning rests on Apache Cassandra's scalability and low latency combined with multi-model support (tabular, search, graph, analytics) and vector search in a single platform, open-source foundations (Cassandra, Langflow, Pulsar/Starlight, Stargate, OpenSearch), deployment flexibility across on-premises, hybrid and multi-cloud environments, and pairing of a low-code AI application builder (Langflow) with the underlying vector database.
Technology
The technology stack is anchored on Apache Cassandra (including Cassandra 4.0 for HCD) for linearly scalable, low-latency, high-availability NoSQL storage, extended with vector search, hybrid search with reranking, knowledge graph and multi-model (tabular, search, graph, analytics) capabilities. Apache Pulsar underpins streaming and change-data-capture features, with Starlight providing protocol compatibility layers for Kafka, RabbitMQ and JMS. Astra DB is offered as a serverless service on AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, accessible via data APIs, drivers and the Stargate gateway. Langflow is a Python-based low-code framework for RAG and multi-agent applications. Deployment tooling spans Kubernetes operators, Docker, Mission Control and OpsCenter.
Go-to-market
Enterprises and developers running mission-critical, real-time and AI/generative-AI workloads at scale, including large organizations modernizing data centers or adopting hybrid and multi-cloud architectures. Named customers include The Home Depot, Verizon and Capital One; as of June 2022 the company reported roughly 800 customers across more than 50 countries.
Geography
Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with origins in Austin, Texas; customers span more than 50 countries, and cloud services are delivered across major public clouds as well as on-premises and hybrid environments.
History
After launching as Riptano in 2010, the company shipped DataStax Enterprise 1.0 in October 2011 as the first commercial distribution of Cassandra, later adding security controls, graph (DSE Graph, April 2016), search and operational analytics; DSE 5.1 arrived in March 2017 and DSE 6 in April 2018. Chet Kapoor became CEO in 2019, succeeding Billy Bosworth. Astra DB, a Cassandra DBaaS, launched in May 2020, followed by K8ssandra (November 2020), Stargate (December 2020) and a serverless Astra DB tier (February 2021). The January 2021 acquisition of Kesque led to Luna Streaming and later Astra Streaming, which became generally available on June 29, 2022 with API support for Kafka, RabbitMQ and JMS. In June 2022 DataStax raised $115 million at a $1.6 billion valuation. From 2023 the company focused on AI and machine learning: acquiring Kaskada in January 2023 (whose CEO Davor Bonaci became CTO), launching Astra Block in February 2023, Luna ML in May 2023, a ThirdAI partnership in May 2023, a GPT-based Astra Streaming schema translator in June 2023, a Google semantic-search partnership in July 2023, LangStream in September 2023 and RAGStack in November 2023. IBM announced its intent to acquire DataStax on February 25, 2025 and closed the deal on May 28, 2025.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Founder mafia
4 people who came through DataStax went on to found or lead other companies.
Competitors · 6
by search overlap
Companies competing with DataStax for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 16
launches, deals, and filingsIBM announced it had officially closed its acquisition of DataStax; DataStax products (Astra DB, HCD, Langflow) are being combined with IBM watsonx.data and watsonx.ai.
IBM announced its intention to acquire DataStax to enhance its watsonx portfolio and help enterprises unlock value from unstructured data.
Commercial retrieval-augmented generation offering based on LangChain and Astra DB vector search.
Project working with Astra DB and supporting vector databases including Milvus and Pinecone, using Apache Kafka and generative AI for event-driven architectures.
Agreement to make semantic search available in the Astra DB cloud database for developers building generative AI applications.
Collaboration to bring large language models to DSE and Astra DB for generative AI application development.
Cloud service based on the Ethereum blockchain for building Web3 applications, available as part of Astra DB.
Acquisition of Kaskada, developer of a platform for using data in AI applications; the technology was open-sourced and integrated into Luna ML, and Kaskada CEO Davor Bonaci became DataStax CTO and EVP.
Apache Pulsar-based streaming cloud service became generally available with API-level support for Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ and Java Message Service.
Funding to accelerate global expansion and development of Astra DB and Astra Streaming; described as a 33% premium to the round completed a year earlier.
$115M source ↗
Acquisition of streaming event vendor Kesque, whose technology underpinned Luna Streaming and later Astra Streaming.
Release of Astra DB, a database-as-a-service for Cassandra applications; a serverless version followed in February 2021.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
Caliber Mining’s ₹450 crore IPO opens today; raises ₹135 crore from anchor investors ahead of issuefortuneindia.com · Jul 2026▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- DataStaxdatastax.com · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does DataStax do?
- DataStax, now an IBM company, builds Apache Cassandra-based databases and AI development tooling for enterprise AI workloads.
- Who founded DataStax?
- DataStax was founded by Jonathan Ellis in 2010.
- Who are DataStax's investors?
- DataStax's investors include Akkadian Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Cross Creek Advisors, Crosslink Capital, InvestX, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, NextGen Venture Partners and 8 more.
- How much funding has DataStax raised?
- DataStax has disclosed $149.6M raised across 3 of its 4 known rounds.
- Where is DataStax headquartered?
- DataStax is headquartered in San Francisco, US.