Chinese conglomerate Alibaba has reportedly acquired a Berlin-based startup, Data Artisans, which provides large-scale data streaming and distributed systems services for enterprises. Apparently, the acquisition has been pegged at €90 million ($103 million).
As reported by EU-Startups, Data Artisans counts among its investors prominent firms such as Intel, Tengelmann Ventures, and Btov. The start-up has raised a total of €6.5 million in two funding rounds previously. The two companies said in a statement that Alibaba had been working with Data Artisans through support and open source work, since 2016, for helping the performance and architecture of the software.
Co-founders of Data Artisans, Stephan Ewen and Kostas Tzoumas, stated that the resources and ownership of Alibaba could now help the startup in reaching new horizons with its open source technology. It would also help the firm in expanding across new areas that has not been explored in the past and to assure Flink to be a valuable data processing framework for modern real-time, data-driven enterprise.
Ewen and Tzoumas further further added that Alibaba and Data Artisans would continue and accelerate contributions towards open source Big Data and Apache Flink, as Alibaba is among the largest user of Flink and contributor to the community.
Sources familiar with the matter cited that Alibaba has committed to provide the company’s own in-house developments to Flink, what it refers as Blink, to the community.
Vice President of Alibaba Group, Jingren Zhou, was quoted saying that the company is confident about this strategic tie-in for strengthening Flink community’s growth, accelerating the data-processing technologies as well as assist in supporting an open, constructive and collaborative environment for global developers that are passionate about enabling real-time applications and stream processing for modern enterprises by leveraging technology expertise of both the companies and share passion for developing the open-source community.
