Ocient
Ocient, founded in 2016 in Chicago, emerged from the Cleversafe legacy—a data storage company acquired by IBM for $1.4 billion in 2015.
Profile
Builds a petabyte-scale data warehouse for running complex analytics and AI workloads while minimizing cost and power consumption.
Ocient, founded in 2016 in Chicago, emerged from the Cleversafe legacy—a data storage company acquired by IBM for $1.4 billion in 2015. Co-founder Chris Gladwin, along with George Kondiles and Joe Jablonski, built Ocient to answer the question customers asked throughout his Cleversafe years: "What's in all this data?" The company develops a hyperscale enterprise data warehouse platform designed for petabyte-scale analytics and AI workloads, positioning itself as 10–50 times faster than competing solutions like Snowflake and Databricks. OcientAIQ, its flagship unified data platform, brings AI directly to large datasets without requiring data movement across fragmented systems.
In June 2025, Ocient appointed John Morris (formerly a board observer) as CEO to lead the scaling phase, while Gladwin transitioned to executive chairman. Morris previously led Cleversafe itself to IBM's acquisition and held executive roles at IBM and Juniper Networks. As of April 2025, Ocient closed a $132 million Series B funding round (with $42.1 million in extensions from new investors including Allstate Strategic Ventures, Blue Bear Capital, Solidigm, Massive, Zelkova, and Northwestern Mutual), bringing total raised capital to $159.4 million.
The company has doubled revenue for three consecutive years and earns recognition from GigaOm as a Fast Mover and Challenger in its Data Warehouses report. Ocient now employs approximately 229 people. Strategically, the company is expanding aggressively: in January 2025, it partnered with AMD to achieve 3.5x performance improvements and 2x memory throughput gains using 4th Gen EPYC processors; in January 2026, CSP (communications service provider) business more than doubled with new leadership hires and ecosystem partnerships (Amdocs, Minsait, Clixer); and in early 2026, Ocient and Accrete AI achieved "Awardable" status in the Department of Defense's CDAO Tradewinds marketplace for national security work, with additional partnerships announced with TekSynap. The company also has support from In-Q-Tel (the CIA investment fund), signaling deep ties to government analytics.
Who buys this
- Communications service providers (CSPs) managing network operations and real-time analytics at scale
- Financial services and large-scale data custodians migrating from legacy systems (Netezza, mainframe)
- Government and national security agencies analyzing classified or sensitive datasets without data movement
- AdTech platforms requiring high-speed query performance on massive audience datasets
- Enterprise data teams seeking cost-efficient and energy-efficient alternatives to Snowflake or Redshift
Publicly disclosed clients
- Dun & Bradstreet (re-platformed 500M+ commercial entities; achieved 96.3% reduction in processing time)
- Amdocs (telecom systems integration partnership)
- MediaMath
- Basis Technologies
Strengths and what to watch
Strengths
- Proprietary Compute Adjacent Storage Architecture (CASA) and Megalane technology deliver 10–50x speed improvements over competing warehouses, with some queries running 100x faster
- Energy-efficient and cost-optimized: 3.5x better performance with 3x less power than Intel-based competitors (AMD EPYC partnership validated)
- Direct AI inference on governed data without movement; trusted by U.S. government agencies and national security partners (CDAO Tradewinds awardable status, In-Q-Tel backing)
Watch for
- Rapidly growing company (229 employees, tripling bookings) with new professional CEO (Morris, June 2025): execution risk on integration and maintaining culture during scale-up; Glassdoor reviews note engineering manager gaps and stock-reward attrition
- Competitive pressure from Databricks, Snowflake, and BigQuery in the cloud data warehouse space; Ocient is still relatively young and private vs. established public competitors; no clear path to IPO disclosed
- Extended Series B (four tranches totaling $159.4M) rather than Series C signals either deliberate patience or difficulty raising at a higher valuation; two-year runway unclear
Recent moves
- 5mo ago Ocient and TekSynap announce strategic partnership to advance hyperscale data analytics for U.S. Government missions
- 5mo ago Ocient and Accrete AI announce strategic partnership delivering AI-driven intelligence solution for national security organizations
- 7mo ago Ocient expands communication service provider (CSP) leadership and ecosystem as AI reshapes network operations; CSP business more than doubles
Key Information
- Industry
- Data Warehouse
- Founded
- 2016
- Headquarters
- Chicago, Country
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Ocient?
Ocient is a Chicago-founded hyperscale data warehouse platform launched in 2016. It processes petabyte-scale datasets for analytics and AI workloads while minimizing cost and power consumption. The platform uses proprietary architecture to deliver performance advantages over competitors like Snowflake and Databricks.
How much faster is Ocient than Snowflake or Databricks?
Ocient's proprietary Compute Adjacent Storage Architecture (CASA) and Megalane technology enable 10–50 times faster performance than Snowflake or Databricks. Some queries run 100 times faster. These performance gains stem from its ability to execute complex analytics directly on hyperscale datasets without moving data.
Which industries use Ocient?
Ocient serves communications service providers (CSPs) managing network operations, financial services firms migrating from legacy systems, government and national security agencies, AdTech platforms processing massive audience datasets, and enterprise teams seeking cost-efficient alternatives to Snowflake or Redshift for analytics and AI workloads.
How much funding has Ocient raised?
Ocient closed a $132 million Series B funding round in April 2025, with $42.1 million in extension funding from investors including Allstate Strategic Ventures, Solidigm, and Northwestern Mutual. Total capital raised reached $159.4 million. The company has doubled revenue for three consecutive years.
What is OcientAIQ?
OcientAIQ is Ocient's flagship unified data platform bringing AI capabilities directly to large datasets without requiring data movement across fragmented systems. It enables organizations to run AI inference on governed data in place, combining data warehouse and AI workload execution in a single platform.
Does Ocient work with government agencies?
Yes. Ocient holds 'Awardable' status in the Department of Defense's CDAO Tradewinds marketplace for national security work and has support from In-Q-Tel, the CIA investment fund. The platform enables government agencies to run analytics on classified or sensitive datasets without moving data across systems.
How Ocient compares
Direct head-to-head against 3 competitors. Picked by 7wData.
Ocient
- Positioning
- Builds a petabyte-scale data warehouse for running complex analytics and AI workloads while minimizing cost and power consumption.
- Customer segments
- Communications service providers (CSPs) managing network operations and real-time analytics at scale
- Strengths
- Proprietary Compute Adjacent Storage Architecture (CASA) and Megalane technology deliver 10–50x speed improvements over competing warehouses, with some queries running 100x faster
- Watch for
- Rapidly growing company (229 employees, tripling bookings) with new professional CEO (Morris, June 2025): execution risk on integration and maintaining culture during scale-up; Glassdoor reviews note engineering manager gaps and stock-reward attrition
- Recent moves
- Ocient and TekSynap announce strategic partnership to advance hyperscale data analytics for U.S. Government missions
Yellowbrick Data
- Positioning
- On-prem and multi-cloud SQL warehouse for petabyte-scale analytics via appliance and Kubernetes deployment options.
- Customer segments
- Financial services, insurance, telecom, and hedge fund enterprises migrating off Netezza or legacy Teradata appliances.
- Strengths
- Andromeda Appliance delivers hardware-accelerated SQL on-prem with identical query API across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
- Watch for
- Founder-CEO Neil Carson departed in 2025 to start Floe with senior engineers. New leadership is unproven at growth stage.
- Recent moves
- January 2026: v7.4.1 released on Andromeda Appliance and three public clouds, adding H3-based geospatial indexing and spatial joins.
Teradata
- Positioning
- Legacy enterprise data warehouse incumbent defending CSP, government, and financial services installed base while pivoting to cloud and AI.
- Customer segments
- Global enterprises, CSPs, and government agencies with existing Teradata deployments. Infrastructure owners managing on-prem to cloud migration decisions.
- Strengths
- Decades of certified government and defense deployments, with the deepest CSP telco data warehouse integration history at petabyte scale.
- Watch for
- Full-year 2025 total ARR declined 3%, total revenue fell to $1.66B, customers actively migrating to cloud-native platforms.
- Recent moves
- February 2025: Michael Hutchinson elevated from Chief Customer Officer to COO to lead cloud and AI platform transition.
SingleStore
- Positioning
- Unified real-time analytics and transaction database targeting sub-second query latency on large operational and analytical datasets.
- Customer segments
- Financial services, SaaS vendors, gaming companies, and enterprise AI teams requiring combined transaction and analytics workloads in one system.
- Strengths
- Single system handles transactions and analytics simultaneously, eliminating ETL pipelines between operational and analytical data stores.
- Watch for
- PE majority ownership at down-round valuation since Q4 2025. Customers and analysts flag reduced R&D investment risk.
- Recent moves
- September 10, 2025: Vector Capital announced majority growth buyout at roughly $500M valuation, with Raj Verma remaining as CEO.
Sources
- ocient.com — Company overview, products (OcientAIQ), founding year 2016, customer segments, feature set
- ocient.com — Leadership team: John Morris (CEO), Chris Gladwin (Founder & Executive Chairman), Kumar Abhijeet (Co-Founder & CRO), Ian Drury (CTO), Joe Jablonski (Co-Founder & CSO), Henry Marshall (CFO), Michael Marchant (CLO)
- www.builtinchicago.org — Series B $132M funding, total capital $159.4M, three consecutive years of doubled revenue, Henry Marshall CFO appointment, growth stage advancement
- fintech.global — Series B completion, $42.1M extension, investors (Allstate Strategic Ventures, Blue Bear Capital, Solidigm, Massive, Zelkova, Northwestern Mutual), sustainability focus
- siliconangle.com — Revenue doubling trajectory, query performance claims (100x faster), deployment flexibility, technical architecture advantages
- ocient.com — Named customer: Dun & Bradstreet; results: 96.3% reduction in processing time, 99.992% uptime, $3.4M in 5-year cost savings, 10-month ROI
- www.techtarget.com — John Morris appointment (June 2025), background at Cleversafe/IBM, leadership transition from founder to professional management, closed bookings tripled
- www.businesswire.com — AMD partnership, 3.5x performance improvement, 2x memory throughput, 4th Gen EPYC processors, 3x better performance with 3x less power than Intel
- www.businesswire.com — CSP business more than doubled, leadership: Mats Wahlstrom (SVP CSP), Steve Rycroft (VP CSP Solutions), partnerships with Amdocs, Minsait, Clixer
- www.businesswire.com — Accrete AI partnership, national security focus, CDAO Tradewinds awardable status, government customer segment
- alejandrocremades.com — Chris Gladwin biography: founded Cleversafe (2004, IBM $1.4B acquisition 2015), entrepreneur background at Martin Marietta/Zenith/MIT, MusicNow, Ocient founding 2016
- www.glassdoor.com — Employee culture ratings: 4.2/5 stars, 79% recommendation rate, work-life balance 4.5/5, culture 4.4/5, concerns about manager experience and stock rewards