“Artificial intelligence is the future, and the future is here!”

The world expects AI to surpass human intelligence and start automating various industries by 2025. It has the power to boost business productivity by up to 40%, so right now, over 50% of the world's population uses AI assistance.

AI has always been the doorway to the future. In 2013 in Paris, 4 bright minds saw the many opportunities this could bring and decided to help the world with it. Thus, Florian Douetteau, Clément Stenac, Thomas Cabrol, and Marc Batty created a platform for everyday artificial intelligence that democratizes data and empowers organization-wide collaboration - Dataiku!

Let’s discover how Florian, Clément, Thomas, and Marc managed to create an empire through their story. Stay with us and keep reading!

The Fantastic Four

Florian Douetteau was born in 1980 in France. He was a quiet boy who focused on improving his skills and general knowledge. Florian completed his primary education at Les Francs-Bourgeoise and continued his education in Lycee Louis Le Grand.

He got a BA in Maths and Computer Science and later gained the title of Ph.D. in the same area. His career path was paved by the many impressive skills he gained as a little boy. Florian devoted his attention and improved his creative writing, and because of his love for screen and board games, he started learning artificial languages.

In 2000, Florian made his first steps in his career at Exalead, which is a search engine technology company. Until 2011, he grew and climbed the ladder of success, but fate played its role, pushing Exalead into closure and thus bringing Florian to a new chapter in his life.

Clément, just like Florian, was born in France. He holds a BA of Science by Lycee Jean-Baptiste Say and a Master in IT by CentraleSupelec. He was a passionate kid who grew into an enthusiastic software engineer, always optimistic and eager to learn more.

His rare ability to combine technical skills with an overall vision of complex building designs earned him respect as an engineer and associate. Clément had experience in the engine software area before he agreed to co-found Dataiku.

The Missing Part of the Puzzle

Thomas is the third co-founder of Dataiku, who was also born in France. He holds a degree in Analytical CRM from the University of Montpellier. His passion for the tech world gave way to his first steps in data mining and the continuous expansion of his knowledge.

The final piece of the puzzle was Marc Batty - a French citizen who studied biology and agriculture and started his career in the fish farming industry. He made a swift change in his adulthood and began work in IT Services before becoming a co-founder of Dataiku in 2012.

Right Inspiration Can Do Miracles

In October and November 2012, Florian handed in his notice at IsCool Entertainment and Criteo and launched Dataiku, a modern artificial intelligence, and machine learning company. What inspired him to do this change was that to survive and support growth in the world’s ever-changing ecosystem, all businesses, regardless of their size or sector, need to rely on information to stimulate continuous innovation.

Although Florian is the name that is often associated with Dataiku, he didn’t feel ready to launch Dataiku and decided to contact Clement, Thomas, and Marc for advice. The fantastic four had a long conversation and decided it was time to make a change in the IT world. And that is when Dataiku came to life!

Each of the 4 founders became a member of the Board of Directors. However, thanks to their previous experience in different yet closely related fields, Clement took the role of Chief Technology Officer of Dataiku, Thomas became Head of Technology Alliance, and Marc became Chief Customer Officer.

A little bit right after the start, in 2014, Florian and his team launched DSS (Data Science StudiO) software in the sizable French market. DSS is an online platform that simplifies and speeds up data analysis and establishes business and analytical applications in a Big Data environment.

After a Good Work Come the Rewards

Dataiku was launched in Paris, France, in 2013 to help companies searching to democratize AI in their organizations. In the beginning, Florian, Marc, Clément, and Thomas researched the market and focused on various companies' most common needs.

Instead of wasting extra time and money, they sat down and created a perfect plan for Dataiku, offering a software suite to companies that could benefit everybody, from business analysts to data scientists. Dataiku invited companies to design and implement AI and analytics apps, supporting them in transforming raw data into forward-thinking analytics and including machine learning models.

The company became more popular in the following years, and customers started using it for many things, such as supply chain optimization, customer prevention, and fraud detection. Their biggest challenge was facing the many competitors, including Digital Reasoning, Swoop, and Tamr. However, it was evident after a while that none of them could offer the same service package as Dataiku.

Dataiku IPO: A Magnet for Investors

If there’s one particular thing that Florian excels at, it’s the ability to raise funds. As the CEO of Dataiku, Florian has led the company through 10 funding rounds, raising more than $646.8M in total.

In 2015, the first round began making Dataiku raise a stunning $3.2 million from 3 investors, including Alven Capital and Serena Capita. A year later, Series A followed, rounding at $14 million from 2 investors, the more dominant one being the New York-based venture company, FirstMark Capital. Series B managed to go double and get $28M. This one was in 2017, when the most prominent investor was Battery Ventures, although some past investors also took part.

A further $101M was raised in 2018 from the Series C round of funding. Iconiq Capital, FirstMark Capital, Down Capital, Battery Ventures, and Alven Capital were the investors. Capital G entered the list of investors in 2019, which pushed Dataiku to unicorn status.

2020 was highly beneficial for this company because it announced a Series D round, which brought an additional $100M for Dataiku, thanks to 7 investors.

The funding cycles didn’t seem to stop there. In August 2021, a new round was announced, leading to the Dataiku team raising $400 million, with the lead investor being Tiger Global Management.

Today, over 450 companies use Dataiku services to systemize Al and data for various purposes, from fraud detection to client churn prevention, analytical maintenance to source chain optimization, and other uses in between.

Dataiku Future Plans

Today Dataiku has headquarters in New York and offices in Paris and London and counts over 1,000 employees.

Florian and his team believe that AI and data science should empower everyone and even plan to increase the services they currently offer. All co-founders are proud of the awards and recognition Dataiku has gained so far, including “Best Big Data Solution” and “Startup of the Year” from 2014.

Their goal for the future? The first step is opening new offices in various parts of the world. The board members also discussed announcing an extra round of funding and attracting new investors.

This AI unicorn also plans to invest in various programs to help local communities and enable data access and usage for new academic and nonprofit organizations.

Regardless of where the future takes them, one thing is for sure - as the reach of AI grows, Dataiku will go side by side with it, ensuring it’s deployed in every business and organization.