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Select Star

Acquired

San Francisco, US · Founded 2020 · Delaware corporation · 16 employees on LinkedIn · 7 known investors

Find your way into Select Star

327 people in our graph share verified history with the Select Star team — schools, employers, funds. One of them is your warm intro.

Bertie Aykroydunlockedknows SHINJI KIM · together at Barclays (overlapped)
×2knows the team · via Barclays
×6knows the team · via Facebook
×2knows the team · via Akamai Technologies
knows the team · via Yieldmo

Select Star offers an automated data catalog that lets teams search, document, and understand their data assets, with features like a business glossary, data lineage, popularity metrics, and entity relationships. It also provides AI-driven documentation and data product management tools for data teams.

Also known as Select Star Inc.

Founders & leadership

Select Star was founded in 2020 by SHINJI KIM.

SKSHINJI KIM
SHINJI KIMinFounder & CEOShinji Kim is an executive officer and director at Select Star, which provides an automated data catalog and data governance platform for enterprise data teams.

Investors · 7

Funding

SEC filings, press & company announcements

$17.5M disclosed across 2 of 4 rounds · 2020–2025

$2.5MraisedJun 2020 · 26 investors · Other
Rule 506(b)
Officers, directors & promoters on the filing
  • SHINJI KIMExecutive Officer, Director, Promoter
Offering amount
$2.5M
Amount sold
$2.5M
First sale
Apr 2020
Incorporated
Corporation, Delaware, 2020
Federal exemptions
06b
Full filing on SEC EDGAR ↗

Source: SEC EDGAR Form D. Amounts as filed; amended filings shown once at their latest values.

Company profile

researched Aug 2026

Select Star operates a metadata context platform that automatically catalogs, documents and maps an organization's data assets. The platform connects directly to data warehouses and BI tools to pull metadata, query history and activity logs, then runs them through a query parser into a unified metadata store that determines what data exists, where it lives and how it is used. Popularity scores derived from query history rank columns, tables and dashboards so the most-used assets surface first.

Core product modules include an automated data catalog with auto-generated documentation and tagging, cross-platform column-level data lineage for tracing data flows and downstream impacts, entity-relationship diagrams inferred from SQL queries and joins as well as declared primary/foreign keys, an "Ask AI" assistant, data access control, and an MCP server that exposes metadata, lineage and semantic models to LLMs and agents through a single API. A semantic model generation feature reverse-engineers logic embedded in BI dashboards to supply context to tools such as Snowflake Cortex Analyst. Stated solution areas are data governance, data democratization, data migration, change management, cost optimization, AI-ready data and semantic model generation.

The company states it handles customer data under AICPA SOC 2 Security, Confidentiality and Availability standards and offers one-click integrations with common data warehouses, ELT/ETL tools and BI platforms.

Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.

Key figures

latest reported
HeadcountJan 202326 employees
Total funding raisedJan 2023$20M

Company-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.

Competitors · 10

by search overlap
Atlan196 shared keywordsAtlan builds a "context layer" and metadata management platform, including a data catalog, data governance tools, and a Context Lakehouse, that supplies enterprise data context to AI agents and data teams. It serves large enterprises looking to make AI systems operate with knowledge of their data environment.
Netezza189 shared keywordsIBM is a global technology company whose business spans enterprise software (including Red Hat, HashiCorp, and Confluent), IT infrastructure such as mainframes, servers, and storage, and IT consulting services. The company is also investing heavily in quantum computing and AI-based enterprise offerings, including its Lightwell open-source software security clearinghouse and the Anderon quantum wafer foundry.
Truera150 shared keywordsSnowflake is a fully managed cloud data platform that integrates data ingestion, processing, analysis, and AI application development across multiple cloud providers. It serves enterprise customers with unified security, governance, and infrastructure for building data and AI workloads.
Secoda145 shared keywordsSecoda is an AI-powered data management platform that consolidates data catalog, lineage, governance, monitoring, and observability functions for enterprises. It enables data teams and business stakeholders to access and act on insights from their organization's data infrastructure.
Alation116 shared keywordsAlation builds a data catalog platform with machine learning and generative AI capabilities that helps enterprises find, understand, and trust their data. The platform serves large organizations and Fortune 1000 companies that depend on data for critical business decisions and AI applications.
Ovaledge106 shared keywordsOvalEdge provides a data governance platform that integrates cataloging, business glossary, lineage, quality, access control, and privacy compliance. The platform serves organizations seeking to establish data governance foundations and foster data culture across their operations.
dbt Labs104 shared keywordsdbt Labs provides a data transformation platform used by teams to organize, catalog, and manage data in their warehouses. The company serves data practitioners and organizations across industries seeking to build reliable data pipelines from development to production.
Databricks96 shared keywordsDatabricks provides a unified platform for data engineering, analytics, and artificial intelligence, enabling organizations to build and deploy data and AI applications on cloud infrastructure.
DataCamp90 shared keywordsDataCamp is a learning platform for teams that teaches data and AI skills through hands-on coursework accessible via web browser and mobile app. It serves enterprise customers and development teams seeking to build technical capabilities.
Hevodata89 shared keywordsHevo provides a data pipeline platform that transforms raw data into clean, structured datasets for reporting, dashboards, and analysis, with support for SQL and dbt Core models. It offers native orchestration, scheduling, lineage tracking, and monitoring for data teams building analytics workflows.

Companies competing with Select Star for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.

Timeline · 4

launches, deals, and filings
Jan 2025
Select Star Joins Snowflake

Company news post announcing "Select Star Joins Snowflake: A New Chapter for AI + Data Discovery."

source ↗

Jan 2025
Select Star joins Snowflake and other industry participants to launch Open Semantic Interchange

Company news post describing Select Star joining Snowflake and other industry leaders to launch the Open Semantic Interchange, turning BI dashboards into AI-ready semantic models.

source ↗

Jan 2025
Select Star MCP Server

Launch of the Select Star MCP Server providing data context to AI code editors, AI agents and LLMs; the MCP offering was also made available in the AWS Marketplace AI Agents and Tools category.

source ↗

Jan 2023
Select Star raises $15M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners

Select Star announced a $15 million Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Bowery Capital, Sozo Ventures and Pebblebed, bringing total funding to $20 million.

$15M source ↗

Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.

Legal entities · 1

corporate structure
Select StarDelaware

In the news

Research sources · 8

primary sources listed

8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.

Frequently asked questions

What does Select Star do?
Select Star is a metadata platform offering an automated data catalog, column-level lineage and semantic models for data and AI teams.
Who founded Select Star?
Select Star was founded by SHINJI KIM in 2020.
Who are Select Star's investors?
Select Star's investors include Backbone Angels, Bowery Capital, Cardinia Ventures, Data Tech, Sozo Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Pebblebed.
How much funding has Select Star raised?
Select Star has disclosed $17.5M raised across 2 of its 4 known rounds.
Where is Select Star headquartered?
Select Star is headquartered in San Francisco, US.