Company: MemSQL
Funding raised: $45 million, including a $35 million round in January from investors Accel Partners, Khosla Ventures, Data Collective, First Round Capital.
Why it's hot: MemSQL was founded by two former Facebook engineers Eric Frenkiel and Nikita Shamgunov, who walked away from their Facebook jobs, and a pile of pre-IPO stock options, to found their company.
MemSQL offers a commercial version of a database similar to the one Facebook built for itself. (Before Facebook, Shamgunov worked at Microsoft building its database product.)
This is an "in-memory database," meaning it runs really fast in a computer's memory. But it uses low-cost commodity servers, not expensive specialty servers that Oracle sells.
The young company, founded in 2011, has grabbed some impressive customers so far, including Comcast and Morgan Stanley.