Tessell secures $60 million to revolutionize database services

SAN RAMON: Tessell, a multi-cloud database-as-a-service startup, has raised $60 million in a Series B funding round led by WestBridge Capital. The new funding will support the company’s expansion efforts and the launch of its AI-powered conversational database management service.

Founded four years ago, Tessell aims to address challenges faced by businesses as they manage growing volumes of critical data. Legacy database solutions often lack flexibility, and many managed services are prohibitively expensive. Tessell’s platform offers enhanced operational database management, leveraging its co-founders’ decades of database kernel expertise.

The startup claims its NVMe infrastructure delivers 10 times the performance of current database management services while offering significant savings—up to 73%—in total cost of ownership over three years. Tessell also provides zero downtime during migrations, maintains database operations across failures in cloud services, and ensures predictable pricing. The technology eliminates the industry-standard IOPS metering, enabling high input-output operations per second with low latency.

Tessell is compatible with major cloud providers, including AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud, and supports leading database engines such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and MongoDB.

“AI applications can seamlessly scale databases on Tessell infrastructure,” CEO Ramesh Kuchibhotla told TechCrunch. The platform also supports traditional databases enhanced with vector extensions and standalone vector databases.

The Series B round, which included participation from B37 Ventures, Rocketship.vc, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, will be used to advance Tessell’s AI conversational technology and simplify database management further. The funding also supports expansion into Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, scaling operations in the U.S. and India, and increased investment in research and development.

With a headcount of 143 employees across offices in San Ramon and Bengaluru, Tessell serves 40 customers, including Moody’s, Aditya Birla Capital, Tata Capital, and Forbes. As it looks toward the future, Tessell plans to explore analytics as its next business focus, enabling companies to analyze data from platforms like Snowflake and Google BigQuery.