Companies are moving beyond the stage of experimenting with AI and actually putting it to work Grafana LabsThe increasing growth proves this, says the CEO.
Companies have poured billions into the promise of AI, although implementing it at scale has been slower and more expensive, with many struggling. cost, safety and reliability. Now they are increasingly confronted with the following question: how to manage AI once it is up and running.
“We’ve moved from proving value to the next set of expected questions,” Grafana CEO and co-founder Raj Dutt told Business Insider. “How much does this stuff cost? Is it well managed? Does it perform well? Is it reliable?”
That turned out to be lucrative for the 12-year-old observation company. Grafana, which helps companies monitor and troubleshoot problems with their software systems, said it has surpassed $600 million in annual recurring revenue and 10,000 customers worldwide. That’s at least 50% more than the $400 million in September.
Dutt said AI is a “major enabler” behind the company’s accelerating growth. Grafana has seen increased sales from AI companies, while existing customers are increasingly using its AI products.
AI has also created larger accounts of observability by generating more data and more problems for companies to monitor. Traditional software monitoring looks for problems such as glitches or slowdowns, while agents can behave in unexpected ways, such as recommending a competitor or creating safety risksDutt said.
Grafana says it tries to help customers keep these bills low with its Adaptive Telemetry tools, which reduce the amount of data customers pay to monitor.
Dutt said the approach has cost Grafana almost $100 million in potential revenue, although he said “the quality of revenue is better this way” because customers pay better according to what they actually use.
Grafana launched six new AI features in July. It says hundreds of customers use the Agent Observability product to monitor AI agents, tracking speed and reliability. And more than 18,000 organizations – including Alter Domus and Deutsche Telekom – use Grafana Assistant, an AI tool that helps engineers monitor and troubleshoot their systems.
Dutt said Grafana Assistant is the company’s fastest growing product in its history and the majority of its users are paying customers.
Grafana competes with rivals like Datadog, which said this month that customers are increasingly deploying AI and using its product to monitor and secure it, according to co-founder and CEO Olivier Pomel.
