Public Launch for Data Viz Platform Observable

San Francisco, CA-based data visualization solutions firm Observable has formally launched with $10.5m in Series A funding.

Observable was founded by data visualization and development veterans Mike Bostock, the creator of open source data viz library D3.js and former Graphics Editor at The New York Times, who is CTO; and CEO Melody Meckfessel, former VP Engineering at Google. The company promises to give its users - already numbering 'more than 4.7m' and including developers, data scientists, journalists and educators the means to 'explore, analyze and visualize data on the web, together' - its software focuses on collaboration and boasts 'the largest library of reusable visualizations anywhere'.

The round was led by Sequoia Capital and Acrew Capital. Meckfessel says making sense of the 'overwhelming' data available today is 'the biggest challenge facing our connected world'. She describes Observable as 'the first platform that allows anyone - from developers to academics to hobbyists - to explore and visualize data online together'. Jim Goetz, partner at Sequoia and Observable board member comments: 'Melody and Mike are a dream team positioned to reinvent visualization. Melody's gifts in leading the developer community with simplicity and Mike's linguistic design thinking for visualization combine the best of both worlds'.

Web site: www.observablehq.com .