InfluxData
InfluxData, founded in 2012 as Errplane by Paul Dix and Todd Persen, builds InfluxDB, the open-source time series database positioned as the industry standard for ingesting and analyzing continuous data streams.
Profile
InfluxData builds a time series database for storing and querying high-volume continuous data from IoT sensors, infrastructure, and real-time applications.
InfluxData, founded in 2012 as Errplane by Paul Dix and Todd Persen, builds InfluxDB, the open-source time series database positioned as the industry standard for ingesting and analyzing continuous data streams. The company emerged from Y Combinator and initially offered SaaS monitoring before pivoting to focus entirely on the database product. Dix, the co-founder and CTO, previously worked at Microsoft, Google, and Thomson Reuters.
The company has raised $202 million across five funding rounds, including a Series D of $60 million (January 2019) led by Norwest Venture Partners and a Series E of $81 million (February 2023)—combining $51 million equity with a $30 million debt facility from Silicon Valley Bank, led by Princeville Capital and Citi Ventures. As of 2024, InfluxData reported $75 million in annual recurring revenue, up from $17.3 million in 2021, and employs approximately 200 staff. The company operates as a public-cloud managed service via Timestream for InfluxDB on AWS as well as on-premises Enterprise editions.
In April 2025, InfluxData announced general availability of InfluxDB 3 Core (open source, MIT/Apache 2.0 licensed) and InfluxDB 3 Enterprise, built on a new columnar engine in Rust using Apache Arrow, DataFusion, and Parquet. The platform now includes a built-in Python processing engine for real-time transformation and alerting. In October 2025, the company expanded its AWS partnership, and released InfluxDB 3.5 with enhanced operational tools.
Evan Kaplan serves as CEO; Pat Walsh joined as Chief Marketing Officer in January 2025. The company has faced significant internal challenges, including workforce reductions in 2024 and community friction over the lack of a clear migration path for users of the deprecated InfluxDB 1.x and 2.x open-source versions, though leadership has publicly committed to a complementary (rather than open-core) model to maintain developer trust.
Who buys this
- Manufacturing and industrial IoT operators monitoring equipment and predictive maintenance
- Aerospace and satellite companies tracking telemetry and sensor data
- Financial services and fintech firms requiring low-latency observability and anomaly detection
- Cloud infrastructure teams using DevOps monitoring and application performance tracking
- Energy and utilities managing grid data and renewable power generation
Publicly disclosed clients
- Capital One
- PayPal
- Siemens
- eBay
- Honeywell
- Intuit
- NVIDIA
- Accenture
Strengths and what to watch
Strengths
- Ranked #1 time series database by DB-Engines with over 1 billion downloads and 1+ million open source instances in production
- Rust-based InfluxDB 3 engine delivers sub-10ms query latencies and millions of writes per second, outperforming prior versions on scale and speed
- Dual-licensed open source model (MIT/Apache 2.0) with permissive terms and clear separation between free and commercial features, reducing lock-in risk for users
Watch for
- Community friction over breaking changes: no automated migration path from InfluxDB 1.x/2.x to 3.x, and Flux query language was deprecated in favor of SQL, leaving long-time OSS users uncertain about upgrade paths
- Organizational strain: layoffs in 2024 and reported concerns from employees about leadership clarity and vision; current headcount ~200 suggests prior headcount cuts
- Customer concentration risk: no disclosed customer concentration metrics; enterprise revenue growth ($75M ARR by 2024) may depend heavily on a small number of large deals given the funding runway
Recent moves
Key Information
- Industry
- NewSQL Databases
- Founded
- 2012
- Headquarters
- San Francisco
Frequently Asked Questions
What is InfluxData?
InfluxData builds InfluxDB, an open-source time series database designed to ingest and analyze high-volume continuous data streams from IoT sensors, infrastructure, and real-time applications. Founded in 2012, the company is recognized as the industry standard in time series data storage and querying.
What is InfluxDB used for?
InfluxDB serves manufacturing for equipment monitoring, aerospace for telemetry tracking, financial services for low-latency observability, cloud infrastructure teams for DevOps monitoring, and energy utilities managing grid data. Companies like PayPal, Capital One, and Siemens use InfluxDB for continuous data analysis.
What are the main features of InfluxDB 3?
InfluxDB 3 features a Rust-based columnar engine built on Apache Arrow and DataFusion, delivering sub-10ms query latencies and millions of writes per second. It includes a built-in Python processing engine for real-time transformation and alerting, outperforming prior versions on scale and speed.
Is InfluxDB open source?
Yes, InfluxDB 3 Core is open source under MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses. InfluxData operates under a complementary model with clear separation between free and commercial features, reducing lock-in risk for users while maintaining a permissive licensing approach that encourages adoption.
How do I migrate from InfluxDB 2.x to InfluxDB 3?
InfluxData has not provided an automated migration path from InfluxDB 1.x or 2.x to version 3, creating uncertainty for long-time open-source users. The query language also shifted from Flux to SQL. Leadership has committed to a complementary model to maintain developer trust despite these breaking changes.
How is InfluxData funded and what is the company's current scale?
InfluxData raised $202 million across five funding rounds, including a February 2023 Series E of $81 million from Princeville Capital and Citi Ventures. As of 2024, the company reported $75 million in annual recurring revenue, up from $17.3 million in 2021, with approximately 200 employees.
How InfluxData compares
Direct head-to-head against 3 competitors. Picked by 7wData.
InfluxData
- Positioning
- InfluxData builds a time series database for storing and querying high-volume continuous data from IoT sensors, infrastructure, and real-time applications.
- Customer segments
- Manufacturing and industrial IoT operators monitoring equipment and predictive maintenance
- Strengths
- Ranked #1 time series database by DB-Engines with over 1 billion downloads and 1+ million open source instances in production
- Watch for
- Community friction over breaking changes: no automated migration path from InfluxDB 1.x/2.x to 3.x, and Flux query language was deprecated in favor of SQL, leaving long-time OSS users uncertain about upgrade paths
- Recent moves
- AWS and InfluxData expand strategic offering with InfluxDB 3 on Amazon Timestream
Tiger Data (TimescaleDB)
- Positioning
- PostgreSQL-native time series platform expanding toward general-purpose fast PostgreSQL, targeting developer and industrial IoT operators.
- Customer segments
- DevOps and infrastructure teams, industrial IoT operators, financial services firms requiring SQL-compatible time series storage.
- Strengths
- Full PostgreSQL SQL compatibility with continuous aggregates, eliminating the need to learn a proprietary query language like Flux.
- Watch for
- June 2025 rebrand from Timescale to Tiger Data generated community confusion; product scope expanding beyond time series may dilute core focus.
- Recent moves
- Launched TimescaleDB Enterprise for on-premises and edge deployment at Hannover Messe, April 2026, targeting industrial operators leaving legacy historian platforms.
VictoriaMetrics
- Positioning
- Bootstrapped open-source metrics and logs platform, Prometheus-compatible, positioned on resource efficiency and operational simplicity.
- Customer segments
- Infrastructure engineers, Kubernetes operators, and cloud-native teams running high-volume observability stacks on constrained compute budgets.
- Strengths
- Documented 10x lower resource consumption and superior compression versus Prometheus, with horizontal scaling requiring no cluster sharding management.
- Watch for
- Bootstrapped with no institutional funding; enterprise support SLA depth and professional services coverage lag behind VC-backed competitors.
- Recent moves
- VictoriaLogs reached general availability in Q1 2026, extending the platform from metrics into structured log management.
QuestDB
- Positioning
- SQL-first time series database targeting financial data, market analytics, and real-time operational workloads requiring low-latency query execution.
- Customer segments
- Quantitative finance teams, market data engineers, and high-frequency trading firms requiring SQL-native time series analytics at scale.
- Strengths
- Native SQL time series extensions (SAMPLE BY, ASOF JOIN) with N-dimensional array columns enabling order book snapshot storage without schema workarounds.
- Watch for
- $18M total raised versus InfluxData's $202M; limited professional services and enterprise SLA coverage for large-scale production deployments.
- Recent moves
- QuestDB 9.1 released October 2025 with symbol auto-scaling, enabling up to 2 million distinct values per column in production workloads.
Sources
- www.influxdata.com — Company overview, product portfolio (InfluxDB 3 Core/Enterprise, Telegraf, Cloud), customer list, positioning as #1 time series database
- www.influxdata.com — Series E funding: $81 million total ($51M equity + $30M debt), February 2023, lead investors Princeville Capital and Citi Ventures, use of funds for InfluxDB IOx development
- blocksandfiles.com — InfluxDB 3 April 2025 GA announcement, Rust/Apache Arrow architecture, Python processing engine, performance metrics
- www.influxdata.com — Open source strategy under MIT/Apache 2.0 licenses, complementary model commitment, Paul Dix perspective on licensing and competitive safeguards
- getlatka.com — Revenue: $75M ARR in 2024, up from $17.3M in 2021; valuation data
- www.businesswire.com — October 2025 AWS partnership expansion, InfluxDB 3 on Amazon Timestream managed service