Imply

Imply is a data infrastructure company founded in 2015 by the original creators of Apache Druid, an open-source database for real-time analytics applications. The company commercializes Druid through several delivery models: Imply Polaris, a fully-managed database-as-a-service; Imply Enterprise Hybrid, a hybrid-managed software offering; and Imply Enterprise, a self-managed offering. Imply positions itself as a leading contributor to the Apache Druid project, adding committer-driven support, enterprise security, performance monitoring and advanced analytic query capabilities not present in the open-source distribution.

More recently, Imply's public positioning centers on Imply Lumi, described as an observability data layer intended to decouple observability and security tooling from proprietary storage. Lumi is presented as a way to ingest data once and reuse it across dashboards, BI tools (such as Tableau and Power BI), AI assistants (such as Claude and ChatGPT) and machine learning pipelines, without migrating existing workflows. A feature called Lumi Loglake allows enterprises to search unstructured logs directly in object storage such as AWS S3, Delta Lake and Apache Iceberg, rather than copying data back before querying. Marketing materials cite figures of over 70% cost reduction and 10x faster queries.

The company also maintains a public open-source presence through the implydata GitHub organization, which hosts 85 repositories including Pivot (a Druid data exploration UI), Plywood, PlyQL, druid-query-toolkit, learn-druid notebooks and Druid data generators.

Founding story

Imply was founded in 2015 by the original creators of Apache Druid. CEO Fangjin Yang has described the company's origin as three friends working around a desk in a small San Francisco apartment. Yang previously served as lead engineer at Metamarkets (2011-2015) and as a research and development engineer at Cisco Systems (2009-2011), and holds a BASc in electrical engineering and an MASc in computer engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Business model

Imply sells commercial products built on the open-source Apache Druid database, offered as a fully-managed cloud service (Imply Polaris), a hybrid-managed offering (Imply Enterprise Hybrid), and self-managed software (Imply Enterprise). Its Lumi product is marketed with consumption-oriented language ("pay only for what you use").

Commercial software and managed-service offerings layered on an open-source core, with enterprise capabilities such as security, performance monitoring and advanced analytics reserved for the paid products.

Traction

As of May 2022 the company reported hundreds of customers and a global team, with thousands of companies using Apache Druid. Imply Polaris was reported to have acquired many customers within two months of launch, largely via self-service.

Latest developments

Recent company materials center on Imply Lumi and the release of Lumi Loglake for searching unstructured logs directly in object storage. Blog posts in 2026 address querying logs in AWS S3, Delta Lake and Apache Iceberg, schema-on-read without a data catalog, retention of VPC flow logs, and comparisons with Splunk SmartStore. Product demo sessions for the Lumi observability warehouse were held through 2026, and the implydata GitHub organization shows repository activity into August 2026, including a Metabase integration for a Lumi demo.