Morgan Stanley record invests in a Swedish technology company | Realtid.se

One Peak Partners and Morgan Stanley lead the largest investment ever in a technology-based graphics database company. Neo4J, an unknown company in Malmö, which counts among its customers 25 of the 30 biggest banks of the world, closes the fifth phase of financing.

Neo4j is a Swedish technology company, world leader in graphic databases. It has just completed a fifth round of financing of $ 80 million, more than 730 million Swedish kroner.

This E-Round series was led by One Peak Partners and Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and also included investments from existing investors, Creandum, Eight Roads and Greenbridge Partners.

Since its establishment in Malmö in 2007, Neo4j has raised a total of $ 160 million in venture capital, the largest investment ever made by a company specializing in graphic databases.

How much is the company total after this round?
"I can say that the value is measured in several billion crowns and that it is significantly higher than that of the previous round completed in 2016," says Emil Eifrem, CEO and one of the founders of the company at Realtid.se

He welcomes the company's new investor, One Peak Partners, and Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.

Simply described, Neo4j offers a tool to handle very large amounts of data very quickly in very large databases. These may be, for example, telecommunication companies or banks that need software-based mathematical tools for managing their internal databases.

Thanks to the rapidity of the tool, based on a mathematical method called graphical databases, which is part of the mathematical learning of optimization, the big banks can create tools for them. AI-based analysis that warns in real time of alleged fraud directed against one or more employees of the bank. customers.

The system can also be used as an early warning tool, which can quickly detect suspicions of money laundering, allow the bank's fraud experts to enter and, at start suspicious transactions, analyze what is really going on and, if necessary, stop suspicious transactions as quickly as possible.

This is one of the reasons why Neo4j relies on its customer list of 25 of the 30 largest banks in the world.

"Graphic databases are no longer an idea or a product, we now have a platform that meets the essential needs of the major banks, telecom operators, retailers, technology companies, car manufacturers and giants. This funding round will provide us with the resources to provide current and future customers with the first graph platform to leverage its AI data, he says.

Announced funding allows Neo4j to create continued success for its users through graph-based applications, while increasing investment in the company's flagship product: a graphical platform supporting applications such as artificial intelligence and machine learning systems.

"But we will also strengthen our organization in both the market and customer support to sell more and provide better support to our existing customers," he said.

Johan Brenner is a senior partner in Swedish venture capital firm Creandum, which was the first external investor in Spotify and has invested in several other successful Swedish startups such as IZettle, Kry and Klarna.

Creandum invested early in Neo4js in conjunction with the company's 2015 C-Round Series and also participated in the series of E-Round series that is now closed.

"Neo4j is one of the most successful enterprise software companies launched in Sweden since Qlik and is the leader in the development of linked data complexity for next-generation business applications and applications," says Johan Brenner .

"We see great potential for graph database technology as tools to strengthen AI and other learning applications by managing data in context." Neo4j is the only company to have the technical know-how and understanding of customer needs, needed to successfully lead the development of graph-driven AI.

Neo4j is the most used graph database in the world. It's found in over 75% of Fortune 100 companies.

The company's customers include names such as Volvo, Astrazeneca, Ebay, UBS, Walmart, Adobe and Orange.

Forrester Research, an international consulting and research firm, highlights Neo4j's leading position in the graphics database technology market: "Neo4j continues to dominate the graphics database market," they said.

Will it be a sixth round of financing in the future?
-No, now we will no longer need to raise capital. We will do this at all times and if we want to turn cash flows into positive numbers, take care of them and take advantage of our own funds.

What is the next step, will there be a stock market listing in the future?
– It's too early to talk about it. I do not exclude it at all and see it as an opportunity. But there are also other possibilities and no decision is made about it.

Emil Eifrem describes himself as a person wishing to accompany the continuous development of the company. It does not look like the jubilee of a young entrepreneur who likes the environment of the start-up in itself and so goes up in his business when it reaches a certain size.

If the Malmö small company, which was the first to develop the new technology around 2007 for extremely fast data recovery, will survive when major US and German technicians such as Microsoft and SAP enter the market and offer similar products. based on the same technology.

Will you be able to survive?
– I do not know. But what I do know is that we have to be the best of the best all the time. To do this, he says:

When we recruit people, we usually ask them why they are looking for a job with us. If they say that they do it because they want a safe job for the next ten years, I declare that it's not the right reason because we just do not know if we left in ten years.

"Instead, you have to understand that to survive all the time, we have to be the best, and those who buy and understand that challenge are the right people to work with us," he says.