Cloudera announced that they raised a total of $900 million in equity in a private round of funding.  Notable was the monster investment from Intel a whopping $740 million.  Reuters reports that this investment was for an 18 percent stake roughly 4.1 billion valuation.

Last week everyone was talking when Intel said their investment in Cloudera was the largest investment the company has ever made in the data center space.   Bold move by Intel and validation for Cloudera.   Intel previous largest investment was VMware, in which it invested $218 million for a 2.5 percent stake in that data center.  Leading Big Data analyst and the first to size the Big Data market is Wikibon’s Jeff Kelly, who wrote about Intel’s investment as leveling the playing field.

With this investment from Intel, Cloudera gets two monkeys off their back 1) the narrative about being too small to compete with the big whales trying to dominate the new modern era of computing and 2) being in bed with Oracle.  Cloudera’s financing is basically their IPO moment, where they can be fully funded to invest in their long term vision.  For Hortonworks this sets the market for their recent $100 million financing just last week.  Look for Hortonworks to get a big lift off the Cloudera financing.

Here is the video of Intel’s CEO talking about the partnership with Cloudera.

This investment cements Cloudera’s role in the computer industry.  I was commenting on theCUBE that no matter what happens to Cloudera (and Hortonworks), they are due credit for creating an new industry.  This is not only a “rocket fuel” type of financing round for Cloudera, but a commitment by Intel to pick a strategy and go with it.  As we say “put some wood behind the arrow”.

Intel has so much to gain by the explosion of Big Data.  With the Internet of Things, data center architectures getting recasted, and cloud computing becoming the most important technology in generations, Intel is signaling to their customers and the industry that Big Data is moving to be centered around the cloud in this cloud era.

WATCH THE CLOUDERA VIDEO MARATHON – ON SILICONANGLE.TV –

SiliconANGLE’s Cloudera Documentary is coming soon!!    In the meantime watch the Cloudera Marathon of video action from our interviews on @theCUBE over the past 4 years.  #techathletes   link: http://siliconangle.tv/the-cloudera-story/