Machine intelligence: Philly venture capital pumps $6.8 million into Bob Moul’s Circonus

Circonus, a Philadelphia-based “machine data intelligence platform” maker, has raised $6.8 million in venture capital from Philadelphia-based Osage Venture Partners, aided by previous investor NewSpring in Radnor and new investors Bull City Venture Partners of Durham, N.C., and Pennsylvania-backed Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

“The round is mainly to accelerate sales and marketing operations to scale the company,” said Circonus CEO Bob Moul, who was recruited to the job last fall with help from NewSpring founder Mike DiPiano.

Moul is well known in Philly tech-business circles as past head of Cloudamize (now part of Blackstone Group’s Cloudreach), Boomi (part of Dell), and SCT (later bought by SunGard, now part of Ellucian).

Moul, who grew up with the industry after teaching himself BASIC computer language on a Radio Shack TRS 80 computer in high school in the 1970s, says he’s putting together a Philadelphia headquarters that might total “half a dozen employees” by year’s end, taking Circonus’ total headcount to 30. Other top Circonus officials are based in Maryland.

The Circonus Platform, which went commercial last fall, is designed to help companies collect, store, analyze, and make decisions based on the many streams of business data pouring into companies from linked devices, Internet of Things sensors, and monitoring systems.

Theo Schlossnagle, Circonus’ chief technology officer and founder, has said the platform derived from Circonus’ work since he split it off from Fulton, Md.-based OmniTI a decade ago. The firm has focused on machine data research and applications on distributed systems. Schlossnagle has said it is already in use among “entertainment, streaming media, adtech, energy and fintech firms."

In a statement last fall, Schlossnagle bragged of Circonus Platform’s speed, “unlimited scale,” interoperability “with any technology” and easy data access. “We have created the first machine data intelligence platform that can handle the scale that comes from high-frequency data collection from billions of devices without losing speed, accuracy, or cost efficiencies,” he added. "This is the future.”

NewSpring’s Brian Kim and Osage’s David Drahms are Circonus directors, according to an SEC filing Jan. 6.

Osage’s Drahms in a statement credited his firm’s decision to invest to “Bob’s and Theo’s track records of success," adding that no Circonus competitor “can handle the massive scale of data that businesses are dealing with today at [Circonus’] frequency, speed and accuracy.”

“The need for machine data intelligence is only going to grow,” added NewSpring’s Kim.

Former parent company OmniTI’s assets were purchased by the open-source developer Credativ Group last year. The group operates an Open Source Support Center and PostgreSQL Competence Center, from offices in Columbia, Md.

Circonus also includes OmniTI veterans Jim Wright, the company’s chief financial officer, and Brian Dunavant, director of engineering. Though the company and Moul are based in Philadelphia, many of its senior people continue to operate from Maryland.