Sisu Data

Sisu Data was a San Francisco-based analytics software company that developed a machine learning-based "decision intelligence engine" for analyzing cloud-scale structured data. The platform was designed to let analysts and business users determine not only what changed in a business metric but why it changed and what action to take, analyzing millions of dimensions across large datasets without requiring code. The company positioned the product against conventional reporting and dashboarding approaches, which it characterized as slow, incomplete and not directly actionable.

The technology combined machine learning with statistical analysis and was described by the company as one of the fastest engines for analyzing structured data in the cloud. In September 2021, alongside its Series C, Sisu announced two products, Explorations (code-free drilling, pivoting and visualization of metrics) and Dashboards (viewing explorations, tracking metric changes and sharing key data drivers), intended to be integrated with its existing analysis capabilities on a single platform. Sisu also maintained public engineering artifacts including Python bindings for its API, a Singer tap for the CircleCI API, and forks of database connectors and ML libraries.

Snowflake acquired Sisu Data on October 16, 2023. Following the acquisition, Sisu said it would discontinue the standalone product and integrate its technology into Snowflake's data cloud platform, citing Snowflake's investment in machine learning-powered functions as the rationale.

Founding story

Sisu Data was founded in 2018 by Peter Bailis, who became an assistant professor in Stanford University's computer science department at age 25 and started the company out of his research lab two years later, later leaving his professorship to work on it full time. The systems Bailis and his team built at Stanford became the Sisu engine and, according to a16z's Ben Horowitz, were already in use at large technology companies including Google and Microsoft when a16z first invested. Bailis's PhD co-advisors were Ali Ghodsi and Ion Stoica, co-founders of Databricks.

Business model

Sisu sold its decision intelligence platform as enterprise software for analytics and product teams, distributed directly and also listed as a seller on AWS Marketplace. By 2023 the company reported $9.9 million in annual recurring revenue.

Subscription-based enterprise software revenue, reported as annual recurring revenue ($9.9 million by 2023).

Traction

Customers cited publicly included Samsung, Upwork, Wayfair, Gusto, Mastercard, Autodesk, Equinox, Udacity, Overstock, Ro, Mejuri and Corsair. The company said it more than tripled revenue in the year preceding its September 2021 Series C and reported $9.9 million in annual recurring revenue by 2023. Reported use cases include improving Upwork's internal revenue forecast measurements by 30% and monitoring daily retail sales and marketing campaign effectiveness for Samsung's mobile phone team.

Latest developments

Snowflake completed the acquisition of Sisu Data on October 16, 2023, with Fenwick & West LLP acting as legal advisor to Sisu. Sisu announced it would discontinue the standalone product and integrate its technology into Snowflake's data cloud platform; as of mid-2026 it is described as operating as a division within Snowflake with the standalone product in wind-down.