Neo4j raises $80 million for next-generation graph databases

They're a type of non-relational technology that depicts relationships connecting various entities -- for instance, two people in a social network. And if the news today out of graph database company Neo4j is any indication, they're a veritable cash cow. Neo4j announced that it has raised $80 million in a Series E funding round led by One Peak Ventures and Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, with participation from Creandum, Eight Roads, and Greenbridge Partners. The San Mateo firm has brought in $160 million to date -- the largest cumulative investment in a graph database company, it claims -- and now has over 100 employees across offices in San Francisco and Malmö, Sweden. Emil Eifrem, Neo4j's CEO and cofounder, said the capital would be used to grow its developer tools and support popular use cases, particularly graph-enabled artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems.