Aunalytics: the professor's data company

BEGUN 2011 — 2012 · AUNSIGHT PLATFORM 2013 · IGNITION PARK

The largest software employer the second wave produced was bootstrapped out of a Notre Dame laboratory: Aunalytics grew from conversations begun in 2011 between Nitesh Chawla, a Notre Dame computer-science professor whose research group worked on data mining and machine learning, and Tracy Graham of Graham Allen Partners — the same South Bend holding company that stood behind Data Realty. Building followed in 2012, in the founder's own telling: Chawla was the founding chief executive while keeping his academic post, his first doctoral student David Cieslak joined as chief data scientist, and the company's flagship platform, Aunsight, was demonstrated in 2013 and launched as a cloud-native data platform for mid-market companies that had data and no data-science staff. The model was services first — the company sold the expertise with the software, bootstrapping on client work rather than venture rounds, with its capital raises run through Graham Allen's continuous fund rather than the conventional Series A-to-C ladder.

Its documented scale is the founder's, given in a long interview of December 2021 and printed as such: a total team of about 300, with about 200 of them in South Bend, smaller teams in Michigan and Ohio added by acquisition, and a further raise of 30 to 40 million dollars then under way. The city's own records fix the firm's seat and its growth: the Board of Public Works' February 2019 licensing agreement places Aunalytics in the Catalyst One building at Ignition Park, 460 Stull Street, buying its own platform back from itself, in effect — a 151,160-dollar, two-year agreement for the city's enterprise data platform — and in May 2024 the Redevelopment Commission took up a development agreement with the company for property at 1440 Ignition Drive in the same park, the project to be completed by the end of 2026. A second product line, Daybreak, carries the platform into community-bank data services. No exit, IPO or valuation stands in the record for Aunalytics, and none is printed: on the evidence reached it is the second wave's compounding incumbent-in-waiting, a professor's company that stayed, in the technology park, on Studebaker ground.

Sources:

1. Sramana Mitra, founder interview series with Nitesh Chawla, December 1–4, 2021 — the 2011 conversations and 2012 building; Aunsight demonstrated 2013; the services-led bootstrap; Graham Allen's role in the raises; the team of about 300 with about 200 in South Bend; the raise then under way. sramanamitra.com
2. City of South Bend, Board of Public Works, February 12, 2019 — the licensing agreement with Aunalytics, Inc., of Catalyst One at Ignition Park, 460 Stull Street, for the city's enterprise data management and analytics platform, 151,160 dollars over two years.
3. City of South Bend, Redevelopment Commission memorandum, May 7, 2024 — the Aunalytics development agreement for 1440 Ignition Drive, Ignition Park, completion by the end of 2026.
4. Internet Archive, Wayback Machine capture index — first capture of aunalytics.com dated April 22, 2012.