The European Investment Bank (EIB) has given €25 million in funding to open source database provider, MariaDB.
This investment has been offered in order for MariaDB to increase its global client base as part of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), a long term plan drafted by the European Commission.
The Finnish company will use this new funding to increase the size of its sales and marketing teams across Europe, Asia, and America whilst also hiring more engineers for its Helsinki department.
Michael Howard, CEO of MariaDB Corporation, said: “The investment from the EIB accelerates our ability to expand our product capabilities and continue to develop features that make MariaDB the easiest to use, the easiest to extend and the easiest to deploy in any environment.”
“This funding is part of a multi-step strategy to strengthen MariaDB across Europe, America and Asia, and will help foster the next phase of growth for the company.”
Since SkySQ rebranded itself as MariaDB in 2014, the company has raised approximately $67 million in funding and is said to currently boast over 12 million users across the globe. MariaDB customers include the likes of Wikipedia, Virgin Mobile and HPE.
The company is also currently used by default in several major Linux distributions, most notably as part of Red Hat and Ubuntu. The public, private, or hybrid version of the database can be deployed in Azure, AWS, or OpenStack giving access to another 60 million users..
EIB Vice-President Ambroise Fayolle, said: “We are pleased to be partnering with MariaDB in this breakthrough operation as it will enable the EU bank to support a European software company particularly strong in innovation and with significant growth potential.”
“This is also what the Investment Plan for Europe is about: strengthening Europe’s global competitiveness by supporting high-skilled employment opportunities and enhancing Europe’s position as a major technology supplier.”
The EIB was started in 1958 and is now one of the largest lenders in the world.
