WarpStream Labs Revolutionizes Data Streaming Infrastructure with $20 Million Funding
March 17, 2024, 9:31 pm
Cloud-native data streaming infrastructure company WarpStream Labs has secured $20 million in funding, spearheaded by Greylock and Amplify Partners, with notable angel investors like Ben Sigelman (Lightstep CEO), Spencer Kimball (CockroachDB CEO), and Barry McCardel (Hex Technologies CEO) joining the round. This influx of capital will fuel WarpStream's expansion efforts, allowing them to recruit top talent, bolster their market team, and further develop their product offerings.
In a world where organizations are constantly seeking ways to leverage real-time data capabilities for a competitive edge, traditional data streaming stacks built on Apache Kafka have proven to be costly and cumbersome to operate within modern cloud environments. Recognizing this gap in the market, WarpStream founders Richie and Ryan, who previously worked at DataDog, developed Husky, a columnar database designed for observability data that operates directly on top of object storage. This innovative approach replaces outdated systems built for static data centers with a modern cloud-native architecture, significantly reducing costs and operational complexities.
WarpStream's flagship solution serves as a seamless replacement for Apache Kafka, running directly on object storage without the need for local disks. By decoupling compute from storage, akin to a contemporary data lake, and utilizing object storage such as AWS S3 as the primary storage medium, WarpStream eliminates inter-zone networking costs, which often account for a substantial portion of the total cost of running a large-scale Kafka workload. Furthermore, the company's stateless compute layer enables rapid scalability and alleviates the majority of operational burdens associated with Apache Kafka.
One of WarpStream's key offerings, the Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) deployment option, is now widely available. BYOC enables customers to enjoy the benefits of a fully managed SaaS solution within their own cloud environment, resulting in cost savings of 5 to 10 times compared to self-hosting Apache Kafka. By merging compute and storage resources within the customer's infrastructure while maintaining a control plane and metadata service managed by WarpStream Labs, data remains secure and under the customer's operational control.
In the words of WarpStream CEO and Co-Founder Richard Artoul, "With Husky, we set out to solve Datadog’s storage problem by making it cost-effective and easy to operate. But we realized that Husky only addressed part of the problem – all the data still had to flow through Apache Kafka. If we could separate compute and storage to reduce costs and operational burden at the database layer, there was no reason we couldn’t do the same at the streaming layer." This sentiment is echoed by CTO and Co-Founder Ryan Worl, who emphasizes the company's mission to make data streaming systems truly cloud-native and cost-effective.
As noted by Jerry Chen, partner at Greylock and WarpStream Board Director, WarpStream's innovative approach not only enhances the cost-efficiency and reliability of existing Kafka users but also expands the accessibility of streaming data for developers, offering a simple and affordable cloud-native solution. With this recent funding injection, WarpStream Labs is poised to drive a paradigm shift in the data streaming infrastructure landscape, empowering organizations to harness the power of real-time data with ease and efficiency.
In a world where organizations are constantly seeking ways to leverage real-time data capabilities for a competitive edge, traditional data streaming stacks built on Apache Kafka have proven to be costly and cumbersome to operate within modern cloud environments. Recognizing this gap in the market, WarpStream founders Richie and Ryan, who previously worked at DataDog, developed Husky, a columnar database designed for observability data that operates directly on top of object storage. This innovative approach replaces outdated systems built for static data centers with a modern cloud-native architecture, significantly reducing costs and operational complexities.
WarpStream's flagship solution serves as a seamless replacement for Apache Kafka, running directly on object storage without the need for local disks. By decoupling compute from storage, akin to a contemporary data lake, and utilizing object storage such as AWS S3 as the primary storage medium, WarpStream eliminates inter-zone networking costs, which often account for a substantial portion of the total cost of running a large-scale Kafka workload. Furthermore, the company's stateless compute layer enables rapid scalability and alleviates the majority of operational burdens associated with Apache Kafka.
One of WarpStream's key offerings, the Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) deployment option, is now widely available. BYOC enables customers to enjoy the benefits of a fully managed SaaS solution within their own cloud environment, resulting in cost savings of 5 to 10 times compared to self-hosting Apache Kafka. By merging compute and storage resources within the customer's infrastructure while maintaining a control plane and metadata service managed by WarpStream Labs, data remains secure and under the customer's operational control.
In the words of WarpStream CEO and Co-Founder Richard Artoul, "With Husky, we set out to solve Datadog’s storage problem by making it cost-effective and easy to operate. But we realized that Husky only addressed part of the problem – all the data still had to flow through Apache Kafka. If we could separate compute and storage to reduce costs and operational burden at the database layer, there was no reason we couldn’t do the same at the streaming layer." This sentiment is echoed by CTO and Co-Founder Ryan Worl, who emphasizes the company's mission to make data streaming systems truly cloud-native and cost-effective.
As noted by Jerry Chen, partner at Greylock and WarpStream Board Director, WarpStream's innovative approach not only enhances the cost-efficiency and reliability of existing Kafka users but also expands the accessibility of streaming data for developers, offering a simple and affordable cloud-native solution. With this recent funding injection, WarpStream Labs is poised to drive a paradigm shift in the data streaming infrastructure landscape, empowering organizations to harness the power of real-time data with ease and efficiency.