Looker (company)
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer software |
| Founded | January 2012 in Santa Cruz, California, United States |
| Founder | Lloyd Tabb, Ben Porterfield |
| Headquarters | Santa Cruz , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Frank Bien (former CEO) |
| Products | Business intelligence software (Looker Platform for Data) |
Number of employees | 140 (as of July 2015) |
| Parent | Google (since 2019) |
Looker Data Sciences, Inc. is a United States-based computer software firm located in Santa Cruz, California. Purchased by Google in 2019, it now functions as a component of the Google Cloud Platform. Looker delivers a business intelligence solution centered on data exploration and insight generation.
History
Established in January 2012 by Lloyd Tabb and Ben Porterfield in Santa Cruz, California, Looker's product development was influenced by Tabb's previous roles at firms such as Netscape and LiveOps. The platform incorporates LookML, a specialized modeling language that allows data teams to define database schemas, enabling business users to query and analyze data without extensive SQL expertise. Looker was the pioneer business intelligence platform commercially available for scalable or massively parallel relational database management systems, including Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, HP Vertica, Netezza, and Teradata.
On June 21, 2016, then-CEO Frank Bien coauthored Winning With Data, underscoring the company’s leadership in data strategy.
Google revealed its plan to acquire Looker for $2.6 billion on June 6, 2019, incorporating the company into Google Cloud. This acquisition finalized in February 2020.
In March 2022, Frank Bien stepped down from his role at Google Cloud.
Funding
Looker announced a Series A funding round exceeding $18 million on August 13, 2013, with investments from Redpoint Ventures, First Round Capital, and PivotNorth Capital. Before this, the company had secured $2 million in seed capital from First Round Capital and PivotNorth Capital. On March 11, 2015, Looker completed a $30 million Series B round. By July 2015, Jen Grant was appointed chief marketing officer, with the workforce numbering around 140 employees. On January 14, 2016, Looker raised $48 million in a Series C round led by Kleiner Perkins, serving approximately 450 clients including Jet.com. Later financing rounds comprised an $81.5 million Series D led by Capital G in March 2017 and a $103 million Series E round led by Premji Invest in December 2018.
Under Google Cloud Platform
As an integrated part of Google Cloud Platform, the Looker Platform for Data offers solutions for managing relational database systems alongside advanced business intelligence capabilities. The company’s estimated revenue for 2019 was near $140 million.