CartoDB raises $23M to help bring location-based data visualizations to the masses

CartoDB, a company specializing in location data analysis and visualization, has raised $23 million in funding.

The Series B round was led by new investor Accel Partners, with participation from Salesforce Ventures (also a new investor), and existing investors Earlybird Ventures and Kibo Ventures. This takes the company’s total funding to $31 million.

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Founded in 2012, CartoDB is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that serves up geographic mapping tools to help businesses and designers create location-centric visualizations on the Web. It’s about creating meaningful maps out of lots of data.

With the advent of smartphones and other connected devices, “location” has become an increasingly powerful metric for understanding shifting trends and how different regions behave. This can, of course, be used by companies to better market themselves, and to better understand how consumers differ around the world.

“The market for location intelligence is snowballing,” said Javier de la Torre, CartoDB’s cofounder and CEO. “There are unprecedented opportunities for companies in virtually every industry to leverage this data in valuable ways, and we’re determined to help make it easy.”

While there are other similar companies and products out there, such as Tableau and Tibco’s Spotfire, as well as Esri’s ArcGIS and the mighty Google Maps engine (which is being shuttered next year), CartoDB pitches itself as a comprehensive, easy-to-use data analysis platform.

“You shouldn’t have to be a data scientist to make use of location data,” added Sergio Alvarez, CartoDB’s chief product officer and other cofounder. “We’re building something radical and creating the easiest mapping tool, which taps into the analytical left and creative right sides of the brain with a seamless user experience.”

CartoDB began as an open-source product from a Spanish company called Vizzuality, and thus far has been headquartered in Madrid. Now, it will officially up sticks and shift its HQ to New York where it already has an office, but the product team will remain in the Spanish capital.

The $23 million cash influx comes a year after the company raised an $8 million round, and the combined funds will be used to “accelerate product development, increase global awareness of CartoDB solutions, and expand sales and partnership programs worldwide,” the company said in a press release.

 

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