Data-as-a-service startup Cybersyn Inc. exited stealth mode today armed with hefty $69.2 raised through a new early-stage round of funding.

The Series A round was led by Snowflake Inc., the cloud data warehouse giant, and saw participation from Coatue and Sequoia Capital. Cybersyn was founded last year by its chief executive, former Coatue head of data science Alex Izydorczyk, and is on a mission to make public and proprietary economic datasets more accessible for enterprise decision makers.

The New York-based startup says enterprises today are becoming increasingly reliant on data science and analytics to improve business decision making and operational efficiency. But it believes that companies need more information, not only the internal data they collect, to aid in this process. Cybersyn aims to provide this additional information in the shape of standardized third-party datasets.

Although external datasets that can be looped into business models are available in abundance, companies face a number of difficulties in deploying them. The first challenge is that it can take a lot of effort to find datasets related to a specific domain, Cybersyn says. Once a company knows where to buy the data they need, they usually have to spend considerable time engineering or formatting that data to make it usable. According to the company, if datasets are not engineered correctly, the information within them is complex, opaque and stagnant, which makes it difficult to extract useful insights from.

This is where Cybersyn comes in. It’s specifically focused on economic datasets. It goes out and finds public and proprietary economic data, then transforms them into commercially relevant datasets that can immediately be used by business decision makers. The information it provides is useful for market intelligence, investments and policy decisions, the company says.

Cybersyn scours the internet for public data sources, and also works with third-parties that generate proprietary data. Some of its datasets are based on aggregated, anonymized data from non-data provider firms. It offers both free and paid datasets on Snowflake’s marketplace, with examples including e-commerce spending data that might be useful to companies in the financial services, consumer and retail industries.

The Snowflake Marketplace is one of the largest markets for third-party datasets, enabling companies to acquire information that they can combine with their own, internal data. At present, there are more than 1,800 dataset listings available.

Izydorczyk said Cybersyn aids companies that lack the technical skills to transform data into usable information. “There is a wealth of data that goes unused because the individuals with the technical expertise to analyze it are often not the same individuals who have the business acumen to apply it effectively,” he said. “We’re focused on bridging that gap.”

Today’s investment is believed to be the first time Snowflake has led a funding round, and it’s clearly motivated by the opportunity to expand its data marketplace and make it more relevant.

Snowflake Senior Vice President of Product Christian Kleinerman said Cybersyn is in a strong position to tackle the challenges around data accessibility. “At Snowflake, we believe in the power of data to transform business outcomes,” he said. “Our partnership with Cybersyn will enable us to deliver even more valuable content to our customers on Snowflake Marketplace.”

Cybersyn said it will use the funding from today’s round to grow its eight-person team, acquire more proprietary data to create useful products, with a focus on macroeconomic trends.

“Understanding the economy in real time is a competitive advantage that cannot be achieved with internal data alone,” said Mike Vernal, Partner at Sequoia Capital. “Cybersyn’s unique combination of public and proprietary datasets will enable companies and government agencies to make decisions faster and with more precise information.”

Image: Cybersyn