Fast-growing database startup MemSQL raises $35M
MemSQL, the database startup founded by former Facebook employees Eric Frenkiel and Nikita Shamgunov, has raised a $35 million series B round of venture capital. Accel Ventures led the round — which brings MemSQL's total funding …
Context & Ripple Effects
MemSQL launched in mid-2012 when former Facebook engineers Eric Frenkiel and Nikita Shamgunov pitched an in-memory database built to make queries fly, betting that cheap RAM had changed what a relational engine could be. Eighteen months later the bet has drawn a $35 million Series B led by Accel Ventures, confirmed on January 22, 2014.
The round's footprint is unusually broad for a pre-revenue-infrastructure story: PE Hub, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, PandoDaily and others all picked it up within a day, which reads as the press treating in-memory SQL as a live category rather than a curiosity. Accel's involvement puts a top-tier firm behind that thesis.
First-order effects
- MemSQL gains the capital to move past its 2012 launch posture — hiring engineering and building an enterprise sales motion against established relational database vendors.
- Accel Ventures takes a lead position in the in-memory database category at the series B stage, signaling institutional money now backs RAM-first architectures over disk-bound incumbents.
Second-order effects
- Incumbent database vendors face pressure to add memory-optimized options of their own, since a funded startup can now court their enterprise accounts with speed benchmarks rather than migration cost arguments.
- The ex-Facebook founding pedigree becomes a recruiting asset: a well-funded database startup can pull infrastructure engineers from large web companies, tightening competition for a scarce talent pool.
Third-order effects
- If memory prices keep falling on the trajectory MemSQL's founders bet on, the default location of the database layer shifts from disk to RAM, forcing the whole enterprise data stack to re-price around latency rather than storage capacity.
- The pattern — big-web alumni raising large rounds to rebuild core infrastructure — points to venture capital concentrating in founder-proven teams attacking the enterprise software establishment.
The trend: Venture capital is flowing into in-memory and next-generation database startups founded by big-web engineers, as falling RAM costs let challengers attack the relational database incumbents on raw performance.