Berlin, March 15, 2017 – Today at the KNIME Summit, KNIME AG announced that equity investor INVUS has invested €20 million in the company to support its ongoing work in transforming the data science industry.
“We’re excited to have an investor that truly understands open source and recognizes the potential for expanding across the enterprise,” says CEO Michael Berthold of KNIME AG. “Even though KNIME was already profitable and is growing strongly, we see a huge window of opportunity for our open source strategy combined with our vision of bringing Guided Analytics to the large group of users who have not been able to benefit from using advanced analytics to date.”
KNIME, with a growing group of software companies, believes that opening up previously closed or exclusive platforms, processes, tools, organizational boundaries and idea sourcing can speed up innovation while reducing risk. That understanding provides the basis for KNIME’s software development as well as its approach to working with the community in the analytics space.
Today, KNIME users can be found in large-scale enterprises in over 50 countries and across a wide range of industries including life sciences, financial services, publishers, retailers and e-tailers, manufacturing, consulting firms, government and research.
“We see KNIME as a company with a real competitive advantage and a vision for expanding on it,” say Mario Kaloustian and Wassim Sacre, Managing Directors at INVUS and Board Members of KNIME AG. “That, combined with passionate founders who care about growing the business long-term, an enthusiastic user community and an excellent platform, adds up to a clear opportunity.”
With independent analysts overwhelmingly acknowledging KNIME as a leader, recent interest from venture capital firms has been high. But it was important to KNIME to work with a partner that would not change the focus, the management team or – most importantly – the open source philosophy that has contributed so much to the company’s success.
“Invus is a perfect match for KNIME: they have a reputation for long-term involvement and have pledged to empower the KNIME management team. They also understand and support our open source model for bringing advanced analytics to many users,” says Berthold. “This will in no way change our dedication to open source or our relationships with our customers while enhancing our ability to help organizations tap into the benefits of advanced analytics.”
For more information, contact KNIME at info@knime.com, or download KNIME and discover it for yourself. KNIME – Open for Innovation.
About Invus
Since 1985, Invus has been an equity investor in companies who seek to transform their industries. Invus partners with owner-managers of private and public companies to help them achieve extraordinary business performance. Over its 30 year history, Invus has achieved both cash on cash multiples and annual internal rates of return that are at the very top of the private equity industry. Today Invus manages assets over \$5 billion through an evergreen fund structure and has offices in New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong. Invus has invested in companies across a wide range of industries including consumer products and services, specialty retail, software, biotech, medical devices. Read more about Invus here.
