Airtable acquires Bayes to up data visualization game

The company has agreed a deal to acquire Bayes, an early-stage visualization startup. The purpose of the acquisition is to enhance the data visualizations on the Airtable platform

Airtable acquires Bayes to up data visualization game

On 12th August 2021, the makers of the no-code relational database, Airtable announced their first acquisition. The company has agreed a deal to acquire Bayes, an early-stage visualization startup. The purpose of the acquisition is to enhance the data visualizations on the Airtable platform. Amount of the acquisition deal was not disclosed by the companies.

Bayes focuses on a no-code approach, which is very similar to Airtable, and the two companies have a shared vision about simplifying activities that once required engineering talent to pull off.

Airtable CEO and co-founder Howie Liu says that while he hasn’t really been thinking about acquisitions, this opportunity came along and he liked how the team and product fit in with the Airtable no-code philosophy. He said, “We fell in love with the team and the product that they had built insofar as it showed us their vision for doing data visualization in a really interesting and user-friendly way that we thought would be applicable…and in spirit to be able to apply that kind of design thinking to Airtable’s product and enable our customers to basically better visualize their data.”

Bayes’s four employees have joined Airtable and the plan is to shut down the product and integrate the functionality into Airtable in the coming months.

Will Strimling, Co-founder of Bayes said, “After comparing our respective roadmaps and future plans, it became clear that by working together we could build something that is greater than the sum of its parts — an Airtable with even more insights, visualizations and reporting features that will continue to improve the way teams manage workflows.” Will further added and said that Bayes matched up well with Airtable and said was a huge inspiration for his company since it launched in 2019.

On how Bayes will improve Airtable, CEO and co-founder Howie Liu said, “We’re going to provide much more advanced ways of graphing and reporting on your data. We’re also going to invest into giving our customers the ability to create truly a custom interface on top of the product.”

Airtable was founded in 2013 and since then has raised more than USD 600 million. In the most recent funding round, company raised USD 270 million at a fat USD 5.77 billion valuation, which gives financial flexibility to the company to make these kinds of moves, and may consider additional purchases moving forward.