The new funding comes after a year of record growth: in 2015, users of Import.io created more than one million web APIs and extracted data from over 5.5 billion web pages. The company will use the funds to further develop its data extraction technology and expand its ecosystem of analytics and visualization partners.

'The web contains a wealth of business data and intelligence that can be used to inform decision-making -- and gain competitive advantage -- but most of that data is locked in an unusable format. Websites are designed for human consumption: like reading pages or watching videos, not for computer-driven data analysis. Our vision is to create technology that makes it easy for businesses to translate the web into data that they can actually use,' said David White, founder and CEO at Import.io. 'This new round of funding represents the biggest investment ever in web data extraction and we are thrilled to partner with investors who think just as boldly and creatively as we do about delivering on our vision.'

The new investment was led by Imperial Innovations, with participation from Wellington Partners, Oxford Capital, Open Ocean, Delin Capital and AME Cloud Ventures. Import.io previously raised $4.5 million in seed and angel funding, bringing the total raised to date to $17.5 million. Gary Read, formerly president and CEO at Boundary and Nimsoft, will join the board of directors as chairman; also joining the board are Martyn Holman of Oxford Capital; Mario Branciforti of Imperial Innovations; and Jonathan Hay of Delin Capital.

'Import.io has developed a completely new way of extracting, processing, and delivering web data, solving an increasingly urgent need for data-driven businesses around the world,' said David Axmark, founder of MySQL and an angel investor in Import.io. 'They are uniquely positioned to be the preferred provider of valuable web intelligence for companies large and small.'

As businesses come to rely more on external intelligence for critical decision-making, web data is becoming increasingly valuable -- but web data has not always been easy, fast, or cost-effective to acquire or use. Traditionally, getting this kind of data required businesses to manually create so-called 'web scrapers' or subscribe to expensive, generic databases that were often incomplete or incorrect.

Import.io's Data Feeds make it possible for businesses to harness the insights from external web data without any of the overhead of building and maintaining sources in-house. Any business that needs complex or regular delivery of large volumes of data should consider Import.io's Data Feeds product.

'It is clear that data is powering the next generation of enterprise software. Forward-thinking startups that help businesses use data to automate traditionally difficult processes are poised to be hugely successful. Data from Import.io is supporting the development of a new kind of intelligent software that automates the process of decision-making and it has already demonstrated incredible success,' said Eric Archambeau of Wellington Partners. 'Import.io has a proven team and a rock-solid product that hundreds of thousands of users around the world rely upon. I'm excited to be a part of their continued success.'

Import.io enables businesses to:

Dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of getting usable web data. Data science teams will never have to write a line of code to get web data again -- instead, they can focus on data analysis and delivering valuable intelligence.

Import.io delivers data as a direct stream via its Data API and in preferred formats like JSON.

Effortlessly scale data-driven processes. Import.io makes it possible for businesses to extract valuable data from 1000s of websites and automatically feed it into business software for immediate use.

Ensure that data is always accurate and up-to-date. All data feeds undergo a thorough quality assessment process to ensure that they have been properly processed. Import.io's intelligent scheduling system updates data feeds at desired intervals: hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly so that businesses are always working from the most up-to-date information.

'Import.io is led by an impressive team of data entrepreneurs who have established themselves as thought leaders in the big data and machine intelligence community,' said Mario Branciforti of Imperial Innovations. 'We believe this team can build the biggest business in the Data-as-a-Service space and we are excited to partner with them.'

Creating an ecosystem of data partners

Import.io is creating an ecosystem of data partners that represent a diverse range of services and solutions. Together they enable businesses to achieve better insight from their data. Leading technology companies like Tableau, Interworks, Silk, and Blockspring are currently using Import.io's Data API, allowing their customers to easily extract valuable content from websites.Import.io empowers data partners to:

Leverage the web -- the world's largest data source -- and provide users with direct access to live web data

Accelerate user adoption by tapping into Import.io's massive user base

Foster a thriving community of data-driven businesses and data scientists

To learn more about how to partner with Import.io, please visit: import.io/partners

About Import.io

Import.io is a web-data platform that puts the power of the machine-readable web in your hands. Using its free data extraction technology, individuals can turn messy websites into structured tables of data that they can actually use without writing a single line of code. Import.io also offer a Data Feeds product for organizations that want large volumes of pre-cleaned, process-ready data provided to them directly.