SpaceCurve, a Seattle-based startup that promises a new approach to analyzing massive amounts of geospatial data, has raised a $ 3.5 million second round of funding. The new money comes from existing investors Reed Elsevier (see disclosure) and Divergent Ventures, along with new investor Triage Ventures, and brings the company’s total funding to $ 5.2 million.
As I explained when the company launched in February, SpaceCurve’s technology is “able to discover the underlying patterns in multidimensional geodata rather than trying to work around the complexity in the data values. The goal is a product that gives users a familiar database experience on data that are not at all ideal for traditional databases.” In theory, that should mean anybody collecting data from sensors, mobile devices or other devices spitting out location data will be able make use of it in ways and at a scale never before possible — and on scale-out commodity hardware instead of specialized big iron systems.
One possible use.
SpaceCurve CEO John Slitz told me during a call on Monday that the company already has some “major, major” pilot customers in the works. One of them is a Fortune 50 that has spent tens of millions trying to solve a particular problem, but has been constantly thwarted by problems with the scale and complexity of its data. In fact, Slitz noted, customers are thinking about a handful of “off the wall” and eye-opening uses for SpaceCurve’s technology.
They’ll have to wait a while before they can test those ideas out, however. SpaceCurve will start delivering code until the fall, Slitz said, followed by a close of its beta period in December and general availability around March 2013.
Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Hasloo Group Production Studio.
Disclosure: Reed Elsevier, the parent company of science publisher Elsevier, is an investor in Giga Omni Media, the company that publishes GigaOM.
