Data science cloud service Plotly raises $5.5M

Plotly, a company that organizes data graphs and dashboards for Google, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force, announced today that it raised $5.5 million in a series A round.

MHS Capital and Siemens Venture Capital led the round, while Rho Ventures, Real Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank followed.

The Montreal-based Plotly says it is “the first-ever data science platform” and that it tries to address the 125 percent increase in the number of companies that work on the data-driven projects. Plotly runs online or on-premise, which enables people to easily use features like sharing, commenting, and Graph Feed.

“Making beautiful, interactive graphs and sharing them online has only been possible if you’re a developer,” said Plotly cofounder Jack Parmer. “We’re changing that by giving anyone with an Internet connection world-class graphing and statistical tools.”

The company told VentureBeat that it will soon introduce interactive 2D and 3D maps, automatic updates your databases, and “beautiful, easy to customize dashboards that fetch and update your data for data analysis and visualization.”

“We don’t really have anyone trying to do what we’re doing,” said Parmer. “Plotly is like graphing crack. It standardizes the graphing interface across Python, R, MATLAB, Excel, and Google Docs while giving rich interactivity and web shareability that has not been possible before.”

Other data science companies, San Francisco-based Domino Data Lab and Sense, also have similar softwares with no social-collaboration elements.

Plotly said the funds will go toward boosting its sales and engineering teams.