Big Data Startup Clustrix Raises $6.75 Million From Sequoia And Others To Build Scalable Databases

Pretty much everyone nowadays is chasing after the opportunity to take a shit-ton of unstructured data, and well, structure it. That means taking huge databases and making them searchable. Which is exactly the business that Clustrix is in. The company was founded in 2005 and about two years ago, it launched a proprietary database appliance that provides SQL database functionality at like, limitless scale.

Now with its product mature and the market wide open, Clustrix has raised $6.75 million from existing investors Sequoia Capital, USVP, and ATA Ventures. Robin Purohit, who took over as president and CEO of the company last October, tells me that it’s a round of convertible debt being used as a bridge to an upcoming Series C round.

After signing up the early adopter market, it’s now going after rapid customer acquisition, and Purohit says the funding is going to be used to aggressively build out the Clustrix sales force. The company is already expanding, with headcount increasing from about 40-some employees when he joined to 60 today. Since he joined, the company has also made significant executive hires, bringing in a new VP of sales and a new chief marketing officer.

Clustrix previously raised $12 million, including a Series B round that it closed in December 2010. Prior to that, it was part of the Y Combinator winter class of 2006. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, with an R&D office in Seattle. It just opened up a European headquarters in Amsterdam, with plans to add another office in India later this year.