The Polish alternative to Snowflake and Databricks ready to go global

In one of the largest seed rounds in CEE in recent months, Oxla, developer of a high-performance analytical database, has secured 11 million US dollars to scale-up its global operations.

Built for data-intensive workloads across IoT, industrial applications, e-commerce, and cybersecurity, Polish start-up Oxla has for some time been quietly readying itself as a cost-efficient alternative to Snowflake or Databricks. 

Now, the firm founded by Poles Kacper Szcześniak and Adam Szymański is set for serious expansion following an 11 million US dollars seed round. 

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Backed by TQ Ventures, Lead Ventures, Warsaw Equity Group, and 4growth VC, Oxla will use the funds to drive commercialisation and product development, targeting market share from existing leaders and addressing demand from underserved segments in data warehousing. 

Oxla says its mission is simple: to empower data engineers and data scientists by setting a new standard for efficiency in high-volume data processing.  

Developed in stealth mode since 2020, Oxla’s foundation is deeply rooted in database science and research. In January 2024, the company’s analytical database became generally available, marking the beginning of customer acquisition.  

Now, with the product reaching enterprise software maturity, Oxla is poised to enter an aggressive commercialisation stage. 

“In 2020, Adam [Szymański] approached me with the idea of building an entirely new analytical database, defying established beliefs about data infrastructure,” says Kacper Szcześniak, co-founder and CEO at Oxla.  

“Having known Adam from previous collaborations, I had no doubts about his technical genius or that he was onto something huge, so I decided to become one of Oxla’s early investors and, later on, join the company. Fast forward to 2024, Oxla is now a 49-person team of exceptionally talented people, driving a product poised to disrupt the data infrastructure space.” 

With the successful completion of its seed funding round, Oxla has reinforced its status as a global company by completing its transition from a Polish domicile to US legal incorporation in Delaware, a strategic move the company says is aimed at strengthening its international presence and facilitating further growth. 

Future direction 

Led by Google alumnus and three-time CTO Szymański, Oxla’s team of database scientists has secured three patents related to an innovative system for controlling data flow in query engines and the dynamic execution of those queries, with three more patents pending. 

As Oxla accelerates its commercialisation, its reach has already expanded globally, with customers spanning four continents. In an era of increasing regulations on data processing and cross-border data transfers, Oxla says it is unique in offering not only fully managed and self-hosted cloud deployment options but also on-premises hosting, allowing customers to maintain full control over their data. 

Oxla’s fully managed cloud offering is currently available on Amazon Web Services, with deployment options for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform in the final stages of development.  

Notably, the team is working to scale the product’s performance even further, aiming to handle tens of petabytes of data and process hundreds of thousands of queries per second—capabilities that remain beyond the reach of competitor solutions.  

Looking ahead, Oxla says its goal is to create a comprehensive data platform by integrating existing analytics solutions and launching additional products. 

Investors impressed 

The global data analytics market, fueled by the exponential growth of data usage, was valued at approximately 57.76 billion US dollars in 2023 and is projected to reach 302.01 billion US dollars by 2030.  

Amid this rapid market expansion, Oxla is now emerging as a made in emerging Europe leader in high-volume data processing efficiency. Investors recognise its immense potential. 

Schuster Tanger, co-founder at TQ Ventures, says that Oxla empowers the rapidly growing universe of data engineers and data scientists that require high-volume data processing.  

“The team’s formidable background, ambitious vision, and relentless execution give us confidence that their analytical database is going to shake up the data infrastructure space,” he says. 

Balázs Haszonics, CEO at Lead Ventures, meanwhile emphasises the significance of Oxla’s innovation.

“Oxla is pioneering a new era in data warehousing. Participating in this seed round, one of the largest in the Central and Eastern Europe region in recent times, underscores our confidence in Oxla’s vision and exceptional team.  

“Their solution is set to become a new standard in the field, redefining how businesses manage and leverage data.” 

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