Graph database startup Graphwise said today it has secured a significant investment from the European venture capital firm Oakley Capital as it looks to beef up its go-to-market strategy and expand globally.

It will also use the funds to pursue strategic acquisitions, it said. Oakley has acquired a majority stake in the Bulgarian startup from a consortium of investors that include Integral Capital Group, PortoLion Capital Partners, Carpathian Partners and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It did not disclose the size of the deal.

Graphwise is the creator and developer of an open-source graph database called GraphDB, which makes it possible to store contextual data alongside business records, such as information about which specific store a sale took place in. This isn’t possible with traditional Structured Query Language databases, because their architecture doesn’t allow for these connections to be discovered easily.

According to Graphwise, the GraphDB platform is designed to address the gap between raw data and the need for actionable knowledge that can enhance the capabilities of large language models. So instead of treating content and data as separate concerns, it creates an intelligent fabric that connects them together.

To do this, GraphDB is based on a knowledge graph that provides a dynamic, interconnected view of enterprise content and how it relates to the database records. It works by encoding relationships, hierarchies and metadata in such a way that AI models can derive user’s intent, suggest related topics and support scenario-based recommendations.

For instance, documents will be auto-tagged with both user-specified taxonomies and content-derived semantics. The key element here is GraphDB’s so-called “semantic layer,” which is uniquely able to manage both structured data and unstructured content, while maintaining consistent semantic metadata that ties this information together.

Graphwise believes that this architecture is just what’s needed to support autonomous artificial intelligence agents that can perform work on behalf of humans without supervision. AI agents are powered by large language models that are extremely good at processing natural language.

However, they’re also infamous for their factual inconsistencies, known as “hallucinations,” and an inability to explain their reasoning. Graphwise changes this, grounding LLMs in a reliable and governed layer of verifiable enterprise facts that agents can retrieve information from and reason across.

To support AI agents, GraphDB uses a technique called GraphRAG, which helps them retrieve the precise, contextual information the underlying model needs to respond to a prompt. It’s an especially useful capability for regulated and data-intensive industries such as financial services, healthcare and life sciences, where strict data governance, auditability and compliance are essential requirements.

Another advantage GraphDB provides to AI agents is cost benefits. Because it feeds models very specific, contextual information instead of just drowning them in masses of unstructured data, agents can dramatically reduce the amount of data they need to process, which means much lower token consumption.

These are the reasons why Oakley Capital decided to take a majority stake in Graphwise. It’s going to work closely with Graphwise President Antanas Kiryakov to enhance its commercial capabilities and expand its footprint into international markets. The startup has already made good progress in that regard and counts over 200 “blue-chip customers” and an organic annual recurring revenue growth rate of more than 30%.

Oakley Capital founder and Managing Partner Peter Dubens said trusted, well-governed data is more important than ever because every enterprise desperately wants to make the most of AI agents, wherever they can. “Graphwise has built an exceptional platform to solve that challenge and has already demonstrated impressive growth,” he said.

Image: Graphwise