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§ Private Profile · Austin, TX, USA
Sumatra is a technology company.
Sumatra develops an event-first feature platform designed to streamline real-time machine learning, optimization, and experimentation. The company's core offering focuses on eliminating data engineering bottlenecks that often impede timely machine learning and analytics deployments. It provides engineering and data teams with real-time analytics and incident response tools, enabling quicker diagnosis of issues and optimization of systems.
Founded in 2020 by CEO Greg Kuhlmann and software engineer Lucas McGrew, Sumatra emerged from the co-founders' shared experiences identifying significant hurdles in making advanced AI and machine learning accessible. Kuhlmann, previously a manager in fraud detection at Apple, brought an understanding of the complexities involved in robust data operations and the need for more democratized AI capabilities.
The platform serves engineering and data teams, along with businesses aiming to leverage sophisticated AI and machine learning solutions. Sumatra’s overarching vision centers on empowering creators at all experience levels by providing them with the necessary tools to achieve their most impactful work, thereby broadening access to advanced AI and ML applications across industries.
Sumatra has raised $2.0M across 1 funding round.
Sumatra has raised $2.0M in total across 1 funding round.
Sumatra is an Austin-based technology startup founded in 2020 that built a platform enabling data scientists to create streaming data pipelines for real-time machine learning and analytics without relying on data engineers.[2][3] It served data teams at companies like The Zebra, solving delays in deploying real-time features for applications such as fraud prevention, cybersecurity, and credit underwriting by providing on-demand feature engineering via a declarative language and integrations with tools like Kafka, Kinesis, and feature stores.[2][4] The company raised $1.5M in seed funding led by S3 Ventures and later had its team and platform acquired by Stripe, demonstrating strong early growth and validation in the real-time data processing space.[2][3]
Sumatra was co-founded in 2020 by CEO Greg Kuhlmann, who holds a Ph.D. in Machine Learning from the University of Texas at Austin and previously led anti-fraud data science teams at Apple for App Store and Apple Pay, and CTO Lucas McGrew, a software engineer.[2][3] The idea emerged from their experiences struggling to deploy machine learning models in time-critical environments due to data engineering bottlenecks.[2] Early traction came from testing with partners like The Zebra, where Sumatra enabled real-time access to customer behavior data previously limited to offline analysis, allowing the data science team to ship multiple ML services quickly.[2]
Sumatra rode the trend toward real-time machine learning and democratized data infrastructure, addressing the growing demand for instant analytics in AI-driven applications amid exploding data volumes from edge computing and IoT.[2] Its timing aligned with the post-2020 surge in ML adoption, where data engineering shortages blocked 70-80% of ML projects from production, making tools like Sumatra critical for smaller teams.[2] Market forces like cloud-native streaming (e.g., Kafka ecosystems) and Stripe's expansion into fintech ML favored it, influencing the ecosystem by inspiring self-serve data tools and contributing to Stripe's real-time capabilities post-acquisition.[3]
Post-acquisition by Stripe, Sumatra's team and platform will likely integrate into Stripe's fraud and analytics stack, powering real-time ML at massive scale for payments and beyond.[3] Trends like agentic AI and edge inference will amplify demand for its pipeline tech, potentially evolving Stripe's offerings to serve broader enterprise use cases. This positions Sumatra's founders to shape fintech's data layer, extending their startup's mission of ML democratization from niche pipelines to global infrastructure.
Sumatra has raised $2.0M in total across 1 funding round.
Sumatra's investors include Eric Engineer, DataPower Ventures, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Predictive VC, S3 Ventures, Sunset Ventures, Kyle Porter, Scot Wingo, Sreeraman M G, AI Sprouts, Sentiero Ventures.
Sumatra has raised $2.0M across 1 funding round. Most recently, it raised $2.0M Seed in July 2022.
| Date | Round | Lead Investors | Other Investors | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 1, 2022 | $2M Seed | Eric Engineer | Datapower Ventures, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Predictive VC, S3 Ventures, Sunset Ventures, Kyle Porter, Scot Wingo, Sreeraman M G, AI Sprouts, Sentiero Ventures | Announced |