Just over a year after securing $33 million in funding from a group of top investors, DataRobot Inc. is back at the venture capital trough.

The machine learning startup today announced that it has secured a hefty $54 million round of financing led by New Enterprise Associates. The fund, which is known for backing Silicon Valley giants such as Salesforce.com Inc., was one of the contributors to DataRobot’s previous round and earlier headlined its $21 million Series A round in 2014. There’s apparently a great deal of insider confidence about the startup’s competitive prospects.

DataRobot is taking on establishing analytics providers with a machine learning platform that promises to ease the task of developing data-crunching algorithms. Instead of implementing the complex programmatic controls normally found in such software, the startup’s offering provides a drag-and-drop interface designed to accommodate users of varying technical backgrounds. Workers can simply upload the files they wish to process, highlight the elements of interest (such as sales numbers in a financial dataset) and let DataRobot take it from there.

The platform starts by checking the information against the available algorithms to find the most suitable option. it’s similar to how the machine learning engine that IBM Corp. released last month works, except DataRobot goes a step further by fine-tuning the model that comes out on top. The startup says that its software checks “millions” of different configurations until finding the most efficient way of carrying out the task at hand.

From there, the finished model is exposed through a programming interface that the company says is relatively easy to integrate with other systems. A model can be baked into an application to provide analytics capabilities or executed on a standalone basis using the open-source streaming data framework Apache Spark.

Today’s cash infusion will enable DataRobot to add more ways for companies to take advantage of its platform. As part of the effort, the startup plans to double the size of its engineering team and establish offices in more regions to better support international customers. Additionally, channel initiatives will be ramped up in a bid to attract partners that help widen the adoption of its platform.

Along with seed funding, DataRobot has raised more than $110 million to date.

Image: DataRobot