Fivetran is buying Census, which develops its Reverse ETL platform for making prepared, trusted data in data warehouse systems available for operational and AI applications.
Data movement tech company Fivetran has struck a deal to buy Census, a developer of “reverse ETL” data activation and operational analytics technology.
Fivetran said the Census acquisition will expand the capabilities of its own product portfolio to enable businesses and organizations “to move governed, automated, and real-time data across their entire stack, from source systems to data platforms, and now back into the business applications that drive decision-making.”
Fivetran is funding the acquisition through a combination of cash and equity. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The completion of the acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions.
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Census, founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco, has hundreds of customers across multiple industries and currently employs over 50 people. The Census team will join Fivetran as part of the acquisition: Co-founder and CEO Boris Jabes will join Fivetran to help lead the company’s data activation strategy moving forward, according to an announcement from the two companies.
Census investors included Sequoia, Insight Partners, a16z, Tiger Global, SVAngel, Box Group and .GTMfund.
Fivetran, based in Oakland, Calif., is a leading provider of automated data replication and data movement technology used to collect data from a broad range of operational systems and move it into data warehouses, data lakes and database systems.
Data ETL (extract, transform and load) technologies are used to pull data from operational systems, such as ERP and CRM applications, transform it and load it into data warehouse and data lake systems where it can be used for a range of analytical and, more recently, AI and generative AI tasks.
The Census Reverse ETL platform and other company products take that a step further, providing a way to take organized, prepared data in a data warehouse and make it available for operational software-as-a-service applications using SQL commands, providing those applications with trusted, “single version of the truth,” data.
“At Census, we’ve always believed that data teams should be the driving force behind business growth—not just builders of dashboards,” Census CEO Jabes said in a statement.
“To harness the power of AI and automation, companies need trusted, well-modeled data available in every application their teams rely on, in real-time. Our Reverse ETL service has been pivotal in making that a reality for our customers. Fivetran set the standard for simplicity and reliability in data movement, and by joining forces we’re creating the most complete and trustworthy platform for actionable insights and AI-powered workflows,” he said.
Fivetran said that with the acquisition of Census and its Reverse ETL platform, the company “now enables governed data movement in every direction across all major warehouses, data lakes, and operational tools.”
One of Fivetran’s strengths is the huge number of pre-built connectors it offers that make it easy to connect systems for data transfers – everything from cloud applications and databases to data warehouses and operational tools.
Fivetran recently said it had more than 700 pre-built connectors with Fivetran customers moving more than 6,080 terabytes of data every month: The Census acquisition boosts the total number of connectors to over 900.
“This is an exciting moment for Fivetran, and even more so for our customers,” Fivetran CEO George Fraser said in a statement. “For years, our most strategic customers told us they also want to action their data in real-time with Fivetran, not just centralize it in a warehouse.”
“With Census, we’re delivering on that need. Our joint customers can now move trusted, modeled data into every part of their stack, from source systems to cloud platforms and back into operational tools, all on a single, fully managed platform. This is a foundational step in helping enterprises make real-time, AI-powered decisions at scale,” he said.
This marks Fivetran’s third acquisition. The company’s previous acquisitions both came in 2021 when it bought HVR, a developer of enterprise-grade change data capture software, and Teleport Data, which became the foundation for Fivetran Teleport Sync – a high-speed database replication offering.
Fivetran recorded more than 35 percent growth in 2024 and recently surpassed $300 million in annual recurring revenue. The company has been expanding geographically and in March launched an expanded partner program in a bid to grow the number of VARs it works with.
