Nextdata, the provider of a data-mesh-native platform to build and share data products at scale, today announced it has raised a total of $12 million in seed investment, led by Greycroft and Acrew Capital, with participation from additional investors and leading industry angels. The funding will advance the development of the company’s proprietary data mesh technology and expand the hiring of critical talent across product, engineering and go-to-market teams.

The promise of enterprise AI and analytics relies on the intentional sharing of high-quality data across teams, but traditional architectures make data inaccessible or outdated. Nextdata CEO and Founder Zhamak Dehghani originated the concept of “data mesh” in 2018 to establish a framework for decentralizing data at scale responsibly.

Yet, without a native technology, organizations are building their own home-baked solutions that can be expensive and time-consuming. For data mesh to become a reality, organizations need to move past DIY solutions and automate the end-to-end process of decentralized data sharing in large organizations.

Founded in 2022 to take data mesh from concept to reality, Nextdata is building a revolutionary product – Nextdata OS – that removes the barriers to successfully implementing data mesh, focused closely on the domain data expert experience.

“Right now, the hype around AI isn’t rooted in reality for enterprises – despite decades of progress in data management technology, trusted data still isn’t accessible enough to support the AI revolution,” said Dehghani. “Decentralized data is the future, and Nextdata is empowering organizations to take the leap to data mesh with a new user experience data developers urgently need. We’re building a team of rebel engineers, data visionaries and problem-solvers to lead the movement to responsibly unlock data for all.”

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More than a thousand companies have signed up for early access to Nextdata OS, and pilots with Fortune 100 global enterprises are putting data mesh into action and demonstrating how Nextdata OS can empower business domains to own, share and connect high-quality data in a peer-to-peer fashion to accelerate data discovery and use. The funding will serve to expand the company’s diverse, remote-first team to take Nextdata OS from proof-of-concept to market.

“I am proud to invest in Nextdata, as their data-mesh-native framework is pivotal for future-ready data organization,” said Amr Awadallah, founder and CEO of Vectara and investor in Nextdata. “Just as Docker and Kubernetes revolutionized app deployment, Nextdata will redefine data management.”

The core of Nextdata OS is a new unit of data value – the data product container – that unlocks peer-to-peer data sharing at scale without compromising governance, discovery and quality. Data developers and domain teams can use Nextdata OS for end-to-end development and management of data product containers at scale, supporting AI and analytics use cases.

“Advances in AI have outpaced the capabilities of today’s monolithic data architecture, and enterprises that don’t adapt will likely fall behind their competition,” said Brentt Baltimore, principal at Greycroft. “I believe Nextdata has both the vision and knowledge to pioneer decentralized data architecture, enabling data management in the same way that APIs enable software. When businesses release data from siloes, innovation will flourish.”

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