MongoDB Raises $80M to Challenge Relational Database Tech

MongoDB has secured about $80 million in new funding, bringing the total the company has raised from investors to $311 million. The NoSQL database startup's previous funding round of $150 million came in October 2013.

MongoDB touts a strong community of developers and supporters and is considered a leader in the space. The company recently acquired open source storage engine provider WiredTiger to improve performance. The acquisition is what reportedly spurred the round, as the company initially looked to raise enough to cover the acquisition.

MongoDB competitors include Couchbase and DataStax, among others. Couchbase recently raised $60 million and noted solid momentum and partnerships. Another notable NoSQL database startup is Basho, which announced a $25 million funding round just this morning.

These companies have built their offerings around open source software, making money by providing enterprise support and features. MongoDB added a paid support level for the free version of the database in the summer.

MongoDB has over 2,000 customers and has acted as the foundation for companies like Compose, which built its initial offering around MongoDB. In 2013, Rackspace acquired ObjectRocket, a Database-as-a-Service company that uses MongoDB.

The relational database market may be in trouble, as open source NoSQL database take-up is growing the fastest, according to DB-Engines rankings.

DB-Engines named MongoDB the NoSQL database of the year. Gartner named MongoDB the only "Challenger" in its Magic Quadrant for operational database management systems.

"The market has reached a tipping point where most developers and IT organizations realize that modern applications cannot continue to be built on relational database technologies," Dev Ittycheria, president and CEO of MongoDB, said in a statement. "They are shifting to MongoDB in a big way. MongoDB was designed to make it easy to develop applications that require rapid change, massive scale, always-on operation, and support for a large variety of unstructured and semi-structured data, all at significantly lower costs."

Venture capital continues to find its way to the database startup world. A sovereign wealth fund led the round, with participation from Goldman Sachs and from existing investors Altimeter Capital, NEA, Sequoia and funds managed by T. Rowe Price Associates.