Cloudera
American data lake software company
title: "Cloudera" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["american-companies-established-in-2008", "2008-establishments-in-california", "2017-initial-public-offerings", "2021-mergers-and-acquisitions", "business-intelligence-companies", "business-intelligence-software", "business-analysis", "big-data-companies", "cloud-computing-providers", "cloud-infrastructure", "companies-based-in-palo-alto,-california", "companies-formerly-listed-on-the-new-york-stock-exchange", "data-companies", "data-and-information-visualization-software", "free-software-companies", "apache-hadoop", "software-companies-based-in-the-san-francisco-bay-area", "software-companies-established-in-2008", "software-companies-of-the-united-states", "kohlberg-kravis-roberts-companies", "private-equity-portfolio-companies"] description: "American data lake software company" topic_path: "technology/computing" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudera" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary American data lake software company ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox company"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Cloudera, Inc. |
| logo | Cloudera logo.svg |
| logo_size | 220 |
| type | Private |
| founded | |
| founders | Christophe Bisciglia |
| Amr Awadallah | |
| Jeff Hammerbacher | |
| Mike Olson | |
| industry | Software |
| Cloud computing | |
| location | Santa Clara, California, U.S. |
| products | Analytics tools |
| Big data tools | |
| Data engineering tools | |
| Data science tools | |
| Data warehousing tools | |
| ETL | |
| Machine learning tools | |
| Streaming data tools | |
| services | Cloud data platform |
| key_people | Charles Sansbury (CEO) |
| Abhas Ricky (CSO) | |
| Frank O'Dowd (CRO) | |
| homepage | |
| owner | Clayton, Dubilier & RiceKohlberg Kravis Roberts |
| footnotes | |
| :: |
| name = Cloudera, Inc. | logo = Cloudera logo.svg | logo_size = 220 | type = Private | founded = | founders = Christophe Bisciglia Amr Awadallah Jeff Hammerbacher Mike Olson | industry = Software Cloud computing | location = Santa Clara, California, U.S. | products = Analytics tools Big data tools Data engineering tools Data science tools Data warehousing tools ETL Machine learning tools Streaming data tools | services = Cloud data platform | key_people = Charles Sansbury (CEO) Abhas Ricky (CSO) Frank O'Dowd (CRO) | homepage = | owner = Clayton, Dubilier & RiceKohlberg Kravis Roberts | footnotes =
Cloudera, Inc. is an American data lake software company.
History
Cloudera, Inc. was formed on June 27, 2008 in Burlingame, California by Christophe Bisciglia, Amr Awadallah, Jeff Hammerbacher, and chief executive Mike Olson. Prior to Cloudera, Bisciglia, Awadallah, and Hammerbacher were engineers at Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook respectively, and Olson was a database executive at Oracle after his previous company Sleepycat was acquired by Oracle in 2006. The four were joined in 2009 by Doug Cutting, a co-founder of Hadoop.
Cloudera originally offered a free product based on Hadoop, earning revenue by selling support and consulting services around it. In March 2009, the company began offering a commercial distribution of Hadoop.
In 2009 the company received a $5 million investment led by Accel Partners. This was followed by a $25 million funding round in October 2010 and a $40M funding round in November 2011.
In June 2013, Olson transitioned from CEO to Chairman of the Board and Chief Strategy Officer. Tom Reilly, former CEO of ArcSight, was appointed CEO.
In March 2014, Cloudera raised another $160 million in funding from T. Rowe Price and other investors. Intel invested $740 million in Cloudera for an 18% stake in the company (a $4.1 billion company valuation). These shares were repurchased by Cloudera in December 2020 for $314 million.
On April 28, 2017, the company became a public company via an initial public offering. Over the next four years, the company's share price declined in the wake of falling sales figures and competition from public cloud services like Amazon Web Services. In October 2018, Cloudera and Hortonworks announced their merger, which the two companies completed the following January. Five months later, CEO Reilly and founder Olson left the company in June 2019. Board member Martin Cole was appointed as temporary CEO.
In January 2020, former Hortonworks CEO Rob Bearden was appointed as Cloudera's CEO.
In October 2021, the company went private after an acquisition by KKR and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice in an all cash transaction valued at approximately $5.3 billion.
In October 2023, R2 Solutions LLC filed a civil complaint against Cloudera in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas for patent infringement. That same month, StreamScale won a $240 million jury verdict against Cloudera for patent infringement.
In June 2024, Cloudera acquired Verta, an AI startup specializing in managing large language models. This followed Cloudera's launch of a SaaS data lakehouse and was positioned as a way to strengthen operational AI capabilities.
Products and services
Cloudera provides the Cloudera Data Platform, a collection of products related to cloud services and data processing. Some of these services are provided through public cloud servers such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services, while others are private cloud services that require a subscription. Cloudera markets these products for purposes related to machine learning and data analysis.
Cloudera has adopted the marketing term "data lakehouse," which derives from a combination of the terms "data lake" and "data warehouse."
Cloudera has formed partnerships with companies such as Dell, IBM, and Oracle.
In 2022, Cloudera announced support for Apache Iceberg.
References
References
- "Cloudera, Inc. 2021 Form 10-K Annual Report". [[U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission]].
- "Entity Details". [[Delaware]].
- Vance, Ashlee. (March 16, 2009). "Bottling the Magic Behind Google and Facebook". [[The New York Times]].
- Vance, Ashlee. (March 17, 2009). "Hadoop, a Free Software Program, Finds Uses Beyond Search". [[The New York Times]].
- Handy, Alex. (10 August 2009). "Hadoop creator goes to Cloudera". Software Development Times.
- (16 March 2009). "Cloudera floats commercial Hadoop distro". [[The Register]].
- Wauters, Robin. (March 16, 2009). "Cloudera Raises $5 Million Series A Round For Hadoop Commercialization". [[TechCrunch]].
- (October 27, 2010). "Cloudera Raises $25 Million for Hadoop Development". [[The New York Times]].
- (7 November 2011). "Ignition, Accel, Greylock Put $40M In Apache Hadoop Distribution Platform Cloudera". [[TechCrunch]].
- Morgan, Timothy Prickett. (June 20, 2013). "Cloudera taps new CEO for inevitable IPO push or acquisition: Former CEO becomes chairman and chief strategist". [[The Register]].
- Gage, Deborah. (March 18, 2014). "Cloudera Raises $160 Million From T. Rowe Price, Other Public-Market Investors". [[The Wall Street Journal]].
- (March 18, 2014). "Startup Cloudera raises $160 mln from T Rowe, Google Ventures". [[Reuters]].
- Schubarth, Cromwell. (March 18, 2014). "Big bucks for Big Data: Cloudera raises $160 million". [[American City Business Journals]].
- Randewich, Noel. (March 31, 2014). "Intel invested $740 million to buy 18 percent of Cloudera". [[Reuters]].
- Cherney, Max A.. (December 23, 2020). "Cloudera Buys Back $314 Million Intel Stake. Here's What It Means for the Stock.". [[Barron's (newspaper).
- Balakrishnan, Anita. (April 28, 2017). "Cloudera shares close more than 20% higher on Day 1". [[CNBC]].
- Levy, Ari. (June 6, 2019). "Cloudera plummets 43% after CEO abruptly departs and company cuts forecast".
- Novet, Jordan. (3 October 2018). "Cloudera and Hortonworks shares skyrocket as rivals merge".
- Schubarth, Cromwell. (3 January 2019). "Cloudera completes Hortonworks deal, but investors aren't convinced". [[American City Business Journals]].
- Levy, Ari. (June 6, 2019). "Cloudera plummets 43% after CEO abruptly departs and company cuts forecast".
- (13 January 2020). "Cloudera taps former head of the company it merged with to be its new CEO".
- Gottfried, Miriam. (June 1, 2021). "KKR, CD&R Strike $5.3 Billion Deal to Buy Cloudera". [[The Wall Street Journal]].
- (6 October 2023). "Cloudera Accused of Usurping Patented Data Analytics Technology". [[Bloomberg Law]].
- (13 October 2023). "Cloudera hit with $240 million patent verdict over cloud-storage technology". [[Reuters]].
- (3 June 2024). "Cloudera acquires Verta to bring some AI chops to its data platform".
- "Cloudera Data Platform (CDP)".
- Menchaca, Lionel. (August 4, 2011). "Introducing the Dell Cloudera solution for Apache Hadoop — Harnessing the power of big data". [[Dell Technologies]].
- (June 21, 2019). "IBM, Cloudera Announce Strategic Partnership". [[IBM]].
- Dignan, Larry. (June 21, 2019). "IBM, Cloudera forge strategic pact". [[ZDNet]].
- (January 10, 2012). "Oracle Selects Cloudera to Provide Apache Hadoop Distribution and Tools for Oracle Big Data Appliance". Cloudera.
- (1 July 2022). "Cloudera adopts Apache Iceberg tables to show OS commitment". [[The Register]].
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