Imperial Innovations invests £1.25M in Big Data software provider

Imperial Innovations, a leading technology commercialisation and investment group, has invested £1.25m in Acunu, a data storage specialist, as part of a £3.6m funding round alongside existing investors, Eden Ventures, Pentech Ventures and Oxford Technology Management.

Acunu has developed a database infrastructure and analytics software package targeting the fast growing Big Data market.  Big Data is the term for large volumes of data, including internet and social media generated data which can be difficult to store, extract and analyse information from.

Acunu forms fast databases on cheap commodity hardware, enabling customers to store Big Data and to access it in real-time, significantly cheaper and more effectively than competitors. Customers can also search these databases for useful information and analyse it instantly.

This is an active, early-stage market that many analysts expect to grow rapidly over the next two to five years.  Acunu has gained some early customer traction in the Telecoms and manufacturing sectors.

The company was founded in 2009 by Tim Moreton, Chief Product Officer and Tom Wilkie, Vice-President of Engineering, based on a set of algorithms and open source code initially developed at Cambridge University Computer Lab.

Acunu will use the funds raised to further develop its product market positioning and build its sales team.  The company recently hired a new CEO and President, Chris Gomersall, formerly Vice-President EMEA at ServiceNow and Polyserve, and previously CEO of Ipsoteck, to lead the next phase of growth of the business.

To date including this investment round Acunu has raised £6.6m.  Following the investment, Jon Edington, Director of Technology Ventures at Innovations, will join the board as non-executive director.

Susan Searle, Chief Executive Officer, Imperial Innovations, said: “This is an exciting opportunity to back a fast growth business with a strong commercial team.  Acunu is addressing the issues that the growing volume of Big Data creates and their products offer real solutions for business.