After nearly 13 years in operation, Fivetran has expanded its services to provide its clients with a comprehensive data movement solution. The company, which specializes in helping businesses transfer data from various sources to cloud databases, recently announced its acquisition of Census. Census is a reverse extract, transform, and load (ETL) platform that facilitates the transfer of data from databases into operational tools, thus enhancing Fivetran’s capabilities. Census, founded in 2018, has raised over $80 million in venture capital from prominent investors, including Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Tiger Global.
While the terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, Census was valued at $630 million in 2022. Following the completion of the deal, the Census team will join Fivetran, and the Census brand will eventually be merged into the Fivetran platform. George Fraser, co-founder and CEO of Fivetran, explained that the acquisition was a strategic decision based on customer demand for a reverse ETL solution. Although Fivetran considered developing its own offering and even created a prototype, leaders decided it was more efficient to acquire a company that had already resolved the technical complexities.
Fraser noted that the underlying code of these services is quite different, necessitating a unique set of solutions. Fivetran found a natural fit in Census due to overlapping customer bases and similar platform aesthetics. Fraser emphasized that users who prefer Fivetran over alternatives like Informatica would likely resonate with Census as well. The connection between the two companies goes back to their shared history.
Fraser and the Census founding team met during Y Combinator’s 2013 winter session, maintaining ties as Census was conceptualized. Now, almost a decade later, both companies are converging under a single umbrella, highlighting a significant turning point in their collaboration.