# Dagster **Source:** https://geo.sig.ai/brands/dagster **Vertical:** Data & Analytics **Subcategory:** General **Tier:** Challenger **Website:** dagster.io **Last Updated:** 2026-04-14 ## Summary Open-source data orchestration platform with asset-centric pipeline model; software-defined assets providing automatic lineage and selective materialization over Airflow's task-first approach. ## Company Overview Dagster is an open-source data orchestration and pipeline development platform that reimagines how data pipelines are built by modeling data assets (tables, ML models, reports) explicitly rather than just scheduling jobs. Founded in 2018 by Nick Schrock (creator of GraphQL) and headquartered in San Francisco, Dagster Labs raised approximately $75 million and has built a growing community of data engineers who prefer its asset-centric approach over traditional task-centric orchestration tools like Apache Airflow. Dagster's core innovation is the "software-defined assets" model — data engineers declare what data assets they're producing (a dbt model, a Spark DataFrame, an ML model) and how they depend on each other, and Dagster automatically understands which assets need to be updated when upstream data changes. This asset-first approach provides automatic lineage tracking, makes data freshness visible, and enables selective materialization (only rebuilding what needs updating) that traditional DAG schedulers don't support natively. In 2025, Dagster competes with Apache Airflow (the dominant orchestration framework, managed by Astronomer), Prefect, Mage, and dbt for workflow orchestration and data transformation. The open-source community has grown significantly, with Dagster Cloud (the managed hosted offering) converting users from self-managed to paid. Dagster's 2025 strategy emphasizes its asset lineage capabilities as foundational infrastructure for AI/ML pipelines (where model training runs and feature stores are assets that depend on upstream data), deepening dbt integration, and growing Dagster Cloud enterprise tier with SSO, RBAC, and SLA monitoring. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Dagster? Dagster is an open-source data orchestration platform developed by Dagster Labs (formerly Elementl) for developing, producing, and observing data assets. Founded in 2018, it provides tools for managing data pipelines with an asset-centric approach. ### What products and services does Dagster offer? Dagster offers Dagster Cloud (a managed platform), a data orchestration engine, asset-centric pipelines, software-defined assets, and data quality testing capabilities. ### Who uses Dagster? Dagster is used by companies across multiple industries including insurance, finance, healthcare, biotech, retail, and academia. Production deployments include notable companies like DoorDash, Flexport, and Aritzia. ### When was Dagster founded? Dagster was founded in 2018 by Nick Schrock (co-creator of GraphQL at Facebook) and Pete Hunt (former Facebook colleague). ### Where is Dagster headquartered? Dagster is based in San Francisco, California. ### How much funding has Dagster raised? Dagster has raised $47 million in total funding, including a $33 million Series B round in May 2023 led by Georgian. Investors include 8VC, Human Capital, Hanover, Sequoia, Index, Amplify, and Slow Ventures. ### What growth has Dagster achieved? Active Dagster projects tripled year-over-year as of May 2023. The platform has been adopted across multiple industries with production deployments at major companies. ### What is Dagster's technical approach to data orchestration? Dagster uses an asset-centric approach with software-defined assets, focusing on the data assets themselves rather than just tasks. This includes built-in data quality testing and comprehensive observability for data pipelines. ### Who founded Dagster and what is their background? Dagster was founded by Nick Schrock (co-creator of GraphQL at Facebook, now CTO and Chairman) and Pete Hunt (former Facebook colleague, now CEO). Both founders previously worked together at Facebook. ### What is the latest news about Dagster? In May 2023, Dagster raised a $33 million Series B funding round led by Georgian with participation from multiple investors. The company reported that active projects tripled year-over-year at that time. ## Tags analytics, automation, b2b, cloud-native, open-source, saas --- *Data from geo.sig.ai Brand Intelligence Database. Updated 2026-04-14.*