Highly funded startup

Riding the Big Data tidal wave, MongoDB has raised $150 million in financing to accelerate its global expansion. The round was led by an unnamed financial services company and attracted industry heavy hitters such as Salesforce and Intel.

Now the most valuable startup in New York, MongoDB offers a highly scalable document-oriented database for analytical and fast-changing operational workloads. The platform has been downloaded over 5 million times, and deployed by SAP, MTV Networks, Foursquare and other big name companies.

As part of its aggressive growth strategy, MongoDB will expand its partner ecosystem and target new markets. The company also plans to double its headcount to 600 over the next 12 months.

Originally known as 10gen, the SQL vendor rebranded in August to “get back into alignment” with its flagship product. Shortly afterwards, rival MemSQL updated its distributed in-memory database to support JSON, a popular syntax for processing semi-structured data.  It also improves index scan performance and expands support for SQL.