Published on August 31, 2023
Helsinki, August 31, 2023 – Ellie.ai, a pioneer in product design and collaboration software for data teams, announced today that it has secured a €2.5 million seed funding round. This marks a significant milestone in the company’s journey. The round is co-led by Newion and Crowberry Capital.
Ellie.ai is on a mission to reverse a troubling trend: As a Gartner study indicates, a staggering 80% of data initiatives struggle to provide business value. Surprisingly, the biggest challenge behind this low success rate has nothing to do with technology. Over 90% of Chief Data Officers report culture as the most significant bottleneck in companies getting value out of their data initiatives.
“If we look at the Modern Data Stack there are hundreds of tools to help you automate, build, and document your data architecture. Despite this, the percentage of data projects that provide a clear return on investment hasn’t changed. People get lost in their complex data tools and stacks. We believe the most productive data products start from people, culture, and the need to drive better collaboration across the organization.” – says Johannes Hovi, CEO and Co-founder at Ellie.ai
Ellie was founded to lead the market for data product design and collaboration tools. The company has experienced increasing traction, which aligns well with the surging market demand. In retrospect, Ellie has capitalized on a significant opportunity by applying their expertise in conceptual data modeling on a larger scale. This has led to the creation of a technology-supported Data Product Design workflow, which is designed to enhance collaboration between businesses and data teams more effectively than previously possible.
“You can think of Ellie as “Figma for data teams”, an easy collaboration platform, but designed specifically for large-scale data initiatives. From template-based brainstorming workflows to seamless integrations with other tools, and ease of use of a modern collaboration platform – where everything is connected, easily shareable, and secure.” – explains Hannu Järvi, CSO and Co-founder at Ellie.ai.
The company has made significant growth since launching in 2019 and has today over 50 enterprise customers across the world. Ellie.ai ensures that data initiatives provide tangible business value before companies commit to building complex and costly data pipelines.
“Meeting Ellie we found a team that had decided to approach the data world from a unique angle. They put the needs of humans before the needs of the computer. The opportunity to democratize how data is being used and understood within the enterprise is something we’re very excited about.” – says John Sjölander, Partner at Newion.
Jenny Ruth Hrafnsdottir, Founding Partner at Crowberry Capital, added, “Ellie.ai is a standout startup in the data space. Their drive to reshape how enterprises manage their data initiatives aligns with our commitment to support startups that redefine their markets. We’re thrilled to back Ellie.ai on this exciting journey.”
Both investors have made significant strides in backing innovative data companies. Newion is well known for being an early supporter of Collibra, which is one of the leading Data Catalog solutions on the market. Crowberry Capital has recently backed Dreamdata which is a fast-growing B2B revenue attribution platform.
With this funding, the company is developing new workflows for its customers, making Ellie accessible to more people across the organization, and giving them the tools to design great data products with ease. The team is committed to empowering its users and is passionate about helping data teams understand and validate their product ideas swiftly.
About Ellie.ai:
Ellie.ai is a fast-growing tech startup transforming the data industry. With over 50 enterprise customers, Ellie.ai empowers global businesses to better understand and validate their data product needs before committing to building costly data pipelines. The company is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, and serves customers all over the world. Learn more at https://www.ellie.ai and check open positions at ellie.ai/careers.
About Crowberry Capital:
Crowberry Capital is a venture capital firm based in Iceland and Denmark that invests in seed and early-stage startups across the Nordics. Crowberry has a strong follow-on strategy and commits to putting your company first, as the strong and growing portfolio evidences. With the second fund of €90M, Crowberry is looking to partner with the next generation of tech leaders in the vibrant Nordic tech ecosystem, which we believe everyone should have the opportunity to be part of. The fund is looking for companies that are solving real problems and making a positive impact on the world.
About Newion:
Based in Amsterdam, Newion focuses on European business-to-business software startups and scale-ups with global ambition and has been among the best-performing fund managers in its industry since its launch in 2000.
Newion has invested in more than 60 startups, including Collibra, Foleon, CustomerGauge, L1NDA, Swipeguide, Deliverect, APICBASE, ValueBlue, Mediatool, Objective Platform, Filestage, Salonkee, Dexter Energy and Passendo and has exited Oxxio, Reasult, Mirror42, Q-go, 24iMedia, Roadmap and Nallian, among others.
Newion IV is supported by the European Union through the InvestEU fund.
