DataRobot Becomes A Unicorn By Selling AI Toolkits To Harried Data Scientists

"We lived and breathed data science," DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin says of himself and his cofounder ... [ ] Tom de Godoy. "And we asked ourselves, 'How would we automate our jobs?'" DataRobot wants to make machine learning so simple that a business analyst with basic training can run predictive models without breaking a sweat. The Boston-based startup just raised a $206 million Series E funding round led by Sapphire Ventures to expand the business, which sells software that helps companies across industries develop and deploy in-house AI models. The billion-dollar valuation makes it the highest-ranking of the "picks-and-shovels" startups featured on Forbes' inaugural AI 50 list (meaning the companies that provide tools to help their customers develop their own AI).