Tower raises $6.4m to empower data engineers in the AI era
Tower has raised $6.4 million across a pre-seed and seed round to transform how data engineering is handled in the AI era. With powerful AI code assistants enabling data teams to create applications faster than ever before, Tower handles the critical activity needed for the ‘last mile’ of development. It provides a single environment where humans and AI agents can work together to turn AI-generated code and data pipelines into systems that actually work.
Tower was founded by former Snowflake engineers Serhii Sokolenko (CEO) and Brad Heller (CTO).
The pre-seed round was led by DIG Ventures and the seed round was led by Speedinvest, alongside existing investors. Additional investors include Flyer One Ventures, Roosh Ventures, Celero Ventures, and Angel Invest, with participation from angels including Motherduck’s CEO Jordan Tigani, Datadog’s CEO Olivier Pomel, Harvey.ai’s VP of Engineering Ben Liebald, and Taktile’s CEO Maik Taro Wehmeyer.
CTO Brad Heller comments:
“During our time at Snowflake, we saw how the next generation of engineers wanted a platform that truly combined data processing with AI. Today, it’s amazing to see how much more productive developers have become with AI coding agents; however, they still struggle with the same old operational problems. It’s easier than ever to write functional code, but it’s still difficult for humans – and even more difficult for AI agents – to test it, fix issues, deliver it to production, and operate it. That’s what we’re here to fix with Tower.”
CEO Serhii Sokolenko comments:
“With AI coding assistants accelerating development, the real challenge has shifted to production. Builders can now create pipelines and agents in minutes – but they still need a platform that can run them reliably on real company data. Tower exists to turn those ideas into production systems, powered by information unique to each company instead of public and very dated internet archives.”
As well as turning AI-generated code and data pipelines into production-ready systems, Tower brings storage and processing compute onto a single platform, putting powerful analytics capabilities into the hands of data engineering teams. Tower’s storage platform uses the Apache Iceberg open table format that ensures compatibility with Snowflake, Databricks, and all major data engine vendors. This makes customers the ultimate owners of their business data and ensures AI agents can be fed fresh, company-specific information needed to make the right decisions and avoid hallucinations.
Tower is being embraced as the ‘last mile’ platform of choice by builders globally, particularly amongst those creating Vertical AI services and SaaS. In February, just a few months since launch, Tower exceeded 200,000 runs of 30,000+ unique apps, and its Python SDK reached 70,000 monthly downloads. With the fresh funding, Tower will invest in growing its go-to-market team and deepening the capabilities of its platform.
Gaurav Saxena, Director of Engineering at Ford Motor Company, comments:
“As a data leader in the automotive industry, we see tremendous strategic value in Apache Iceberg, but operating it effectively demands skills and ongoing maintenance that many data teams aren’t staffed for. What’s compelling about platforms like Tower is their ability to remove that operational overhead, making it much easier to adopt Iceberg without building a specialised in-house team.”
Melissa Klinger, Partner at DIG Ventures, comments:
“AI has made it easier to write data pipelines but getting them to run properly in production is still hard – and only getting harder. Serhii and Brad have lived this problem first-hand, and we’re excited to be backing this talented team as they build Tower to tackle such a huge problem.”
Florian Obst, Principal at Speedinvest, comments:
“Teams building vertical AI services and SaaS products need an analytics platform that integrates seamlessly into their stack without standing up expensive legacy systems or stitching together complex cloud infrastructure. Serhii and Brad have built a multi-tenant platform purpose-built for fast integration and rapid iteration. That’s exactly the kind of foundational infrastructure we’re excited to back.”
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