We Reached $100M ARR By Building What BI Never Could

Sigma recently crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). It’s a milestone—but more than that—it’s proof that Sigma is fundamentally changing how people work with data.

Yet, even as we gain momentum, one question keeps coming up: What is Sigma? While we’re often classified as a Business Intelligence (BI) platform, that label doesn’t tell the whole story. Every time we meet with industry analysts, they leave intrigued—because Sigma doesn’t fit the traditional mold. Why? Because we’re not just another BI platform. We’re the next evolution in how companies work with data.

The two waves of BI—and why they fell short

Traditional BI was developed across two major waves. The first wave centered on analysis and reporting, introducing tools like Cognos, MicroStrategy, and BusinessObjects. These were groundbreaking for their time, providing structured, tabular insights and giving organizations their first taste of data-driven decision-making.

The second wave of BI focused on data visualization, shifting the industry from delivering raw numbers to showing patterns, emphasizing aesthetics, and expanding storytelling. Platforms like Tableau and Power BI lead the charge, promising broader adoption through user-friendly interfaces and self-service analytics. Companies bought into the hype, hoping visualizations would finally unlock data’s potential across their organizations. It led to dashboard proliferation. But the reality fell short: adoption plateaued, and the promised returns on massive data investments never fully materialized.

Dashboards and reports became the last stop—but for those who work with data, dashboards are actually the starting point.

Why? Both waves of BI were limited by the technology of their time. These platforms let people see and interact with data, but failed where it mattered most: turning insight into action. A sales leader might spot a problem in a dashboard and notice pipeline coverage is slipping or key deals are at risk—but what comes next?

They can’t drill down and update forecasts, adjust targets, or flag accounts for immediate outreach within the same interface. Instead, they’re forced to jump between tools, export data, and chase down teams, wasting time and introducing errors. 

Dashboards and reports became the last stop—but for those who work with data, dashboards are actually the starting point. It became clear that traditional BI tools only provided a one-way view into data—hitting a dead end when it came time to make updates, collaborate in real-time, or automate decisions. 

How Sigma serves both data teams and the business

Sigma was built to break through that wall. Unlike traditional BI tools that cater only to technical or business users, Sigma is designed to serve both without compromise. Sigma provides the scalability, governance, and SQL power for data teams to handle billions of rows directly from the data warehouse without sacrificing speed. For business teams, it’s an intuitive, spreadsheet-like interface that empowers them to explore data and take action without relying on IT. This dual approach closes the gap between insight and execution, ensuring that data doesn’t just inform decisions—it drives them.

“Sigma just works. The data is there, and people know where to go to get the information that they need.”

One customer, Druva, abandoned Looker in favor of Sigma to overcome performance bottlenecks and limited adoption. With Looker, analytics were confined by the data team that had to maintain models of every way someone would look at data. Sigma’s spreadsheet-like interface made discovery easy and weekly active users jumped from 100-150 to 300-400. As VP Dharmesh Patel put it, “Sigma just works. The data is there, and people know where to go to get the information that they need”​—a testament to Sigma delivering what traditional BI could not.

The next generation: Beyond business intelligence

Sigma enables something BI never could: two-way interaction with data. With one of our flagship features, Input Tables, teams can write data back to their data warehouse–without overwriting previous data. With Input Tables, a sales team can update forecasts directly in Sigma, blending live warehouse data with their inputs and context. Then, real-time adjustments ripple across your work. This keeps everyone aligned. Your workforce no longer cares only about viewing the data, rather having a two-way interaction with the data. 

Data apps will become the standard upon which all analytics platforms are judged.

Input Tables are only the beginning. Since launching this feature two years ago, we’ve seen enthusiastic adoption. We’ve fixed one of legacy BI’s biggest failures and, in doing so, unlocked an entire world of future innovation. We roll out new features every week that stretch and blur the lines between BI and data apps. Our customers are building data products in days—projects that used to take months or even years. The future of analytics won’t be measured in dashboards. Data apps will become the standard upon which all analytics platforms are judged.

Legacy BI tools were built for passive consumption… a “look, but don’t touch” approach. When you combine live queries with business inputs, you can drive decisions in real time. This means teams can update forecasts, adjust plans, and automate workflows in one platform, directly on top of your greatest investment—your data warehouse. No waiting. No handoffs. No hacks. And far fewer exports (hey, they can still be useful). 

A platform built for the next generation of work

Building a next-generation platform doesn’t mean discarding the past—it means evolving along with it. We can respect the foundational work that brought us here while unlocking new capabilities for today’s challenges. 

Sigma gives you everything BI promised but never fully delivered. Spreadsheets, pivot tables, reports, and dashboards? Of course. But now, they’re dynamic, interactive, and built for action. 

Sigma gives you everything BI promised but never fully delivered.

Our customers can finally run pivot tables on billions—sometimes trillions—of records, something that was never possible before. They’re also using Sigma to reconcile entries into Netsuite in just a few minutes, not weeks.

That’s why companies like DoorDash, Clay, and Clover—along with over 1,000 other organizations—have chosen Sigma as their analytics platform of record. And that’s why J.P. Morgan and K5 Global became equity investors.

We’re not just BI—We’re something bigger

To make people feel comfortable, we can call Sigma the “next gen of business intelligence.” But understand it’s something completely different. 

Crossing the $100M threshold isn’t just validation—it’s proof.

Crossing the $100M threshold isn’t just validation—it’s proof. We are the innovators. Our customers know it. The market knows it. And legacy BI vendors scrambling to rework their roadmaps know it, too. 

And while they play catchup, we’ll keep pushing forward—delivering the innovations that redefine how businesses interact with their data and AI platforms. 

We’re not waiting for the future of analytics. We’re building it.