Dallas-based DataBahn.ai has raised $17 million in Series A funding in a round led by Forgepoint Capital, with participation from S3 Ventures and returning investor GTM Capital, bringing the startup’s total capital raised to $19 million.

DataBahn.ai, the creator of a security-native data pipeline platform built for modern enterprise workloads, said the funding will accelerate the development of its platform roadmap for agentic AI—autonomous agents that learn from enterprise data flows to automate data engineering tasks—and support global expansion as the company establishes itself as “the trusted foundation for enterprises seeking clarity, control, and composability in their data pipelines.”     

“Today’s enterprises don’t just need data pipelines; they need intelligent fabrics that adapt, govern and optimize data at scale,” Co-Founder and CEO Nanda Santhana said in a statement. “We’re building the foundation for a new era of observability, one where data is not just moved, but understood, enriched and made AI-ready in real time.”

Founded in July 2024, DataBahn said it’s setting “a new benchmark for how modern enterprises manage and operationalize telemetry across security, observability, IOT/OT, and AI ecosystems.”

Benefits of the DataBahn platform

The company said its platform delivers a dynamic, AI-native data fabric that allows organizations to seamlessly integrate, govern, and optimize data pipelines from any source to any destination—with one-click simplicity and enterprise-grade control.

The company’s new Phantom agents collect telemetry without deploying traditional agents, avoiding footprint bloat and preserving compute resources, DataBahn said. Built on a “revolutionary” AI-driven architecture, the company said its platform parses, enriches, and suppresses noise at scale while also being mindful of egress costs.

The platform’s new federated search capabilities are said to deliver persona-based insights that go beyond just using SQL queries. For security teams, that means faster threat detection and streamlined compliance, DataBahn said, and for observability teams, it offers better predictive analytics for IT outage prevention. For business teams, “deeper application transaction visibility” is on tap.

For the enterprise as a whole, DataBahn said it unlocks the full value of data—”without compromise.”

Company co-founders

DataBahn was founded by veteran leaders in cybersecurity, data, infrastructure, and risk—including alumni of top security vendors, Big Four consultancies, and global financial institutions.

“Enterprises aren’t just overwhelmed by data volume; they’re being outpaced by its complexity,” Santhana said. “Our mission is to transform telemetry from a liability into a strategic asset by making data pipelines smarter, leaner and AI-ready from the start.”

Santhana was a founding member of Securonix and was a tech fellow at Oracle Corp. Before that, he was a regional manager of security practice at Sun Microsystems and was a founding member of Vaau before it was acquired by Sun Microsystems.

Co-Founder and President Nithya Nareshkumar said DataBahn “didn’t set out to build just another pipeline.”

“We built DataBahn to make data work for security and IT teams—not the other way around,” she added in a statement. “By combining deep domain knowledge with plug-and-play AI, we’re helping teams break through complexity and unlock insight from day one—no rewiring, no retraining.”

Nareshkumar, an investor in early-stage startups, previously was managing director of The Depository Trust & Clearing Co. and served as executive director of JPMorgan wealth management in Plano.

More on the platform—and a new board member from Forgepoint

Originally designed to address the unique challenges of cybersecurity, IoT, and OT telemetry, DataBahn’s platform has evolved into a unified control plane for enterprise data. Its expansion into application, infrastructure, and observability workloads reflects a growing demand for intelligent, end-to-end visibility across the modern data lifecycle, the company said.

DataBahn said that as part of the Series A round, Ernie Bio, managing director at Forgepoint Capital, has joined the DataBahn.ai board of directors.

“DataBahn is tackling one of the most urgent infrastructure challenges: how to manage and extract value from fragmented, fast-growing data streams,” Bio said in a statement. “What’s truly rare is the customer enthusiasm. We heard consistent praise for the platform’s rapid ROI, forward-looking innovation and the team’s responsiveness—qualities that separate great companies from the rest.”

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