This week, many of us are in Prague for our annual Bridge Meetup, spending time with customers, partners, colleagues, and long-time friends of GraphAware.
We’re also sharing an important update: Neo4j has acquired GraphAware.
Prague Bridge is always a moment for reflection. But this year, it carries a different weight because we’re reflecting on a chapter that is closing as a new one begins.
Exactly on the day of GraphAware’s 13th birthday, this acquisition was announced.
Standing in a room full of people who have been part of this journey in different ways, it feels like the right moment to pause and look back. Not just at where we started, but at what this next chapter means. To understand why this moment feels meaningful, I need to go back to the beginning.
How it all began
GraphAware began with a fairly simple combination of interests: graphs, software engineering, and a healthy amount of curiosity.
I was a software developer and consultant in London when I first started working with Neo4j. At the time, Neo4j London consisted of two people, one of them being Dr. Jim Webber. Neo4j itself looked very different, too. No Cypher. No server mode. And for those who remember, every graph came with a root node with ID=0. That was really where Neo4j first entered my world.
After finishing my Master’s in Computer Science at Imperial College, where my thesis was, unsurprisingly, about graph databases, Jim suggested something that changed the direction of my career. Instead of joining a large company like many of my classmates, he suggested I start my own consulting business around Neo4j.
It ticked two important boxes. I could continue working with technology I genuinely enjoyed and use my two years of Neo4j experience to earn a living as a recent graduate. That was the beginning of GraphAware. From there, things started to grow faster, and in directions I definitely didn’t map out in advance.
Building alongside Neo4j
Neo4j and GraphAware both evolved over the years. We hired people who cared deeply about the technology, regardless of where they were based. We contributed to open source, organised meetups, spoke at conferences, and spent a lot of time solving difficult problems involving connected data and complex information.
But it wasn’t a straight line. We also made mistakes. Some were technical, some were commercial, and some were simply the result of being a first-time founder, figuring things out in real time.
The moment everything changed
One of those mistakes came in 2019. We found ourselves in a risky position, with about 90% of our services revenue coming from a single customer. When that contract ended unexpectedly, we had to rethink what GraphAware would become.
That moment forced an important decision and led to us choosing to turn GraphAware from a consultancy into a product company.
We took years of accumulated experience, IP, and open source development and built what eventually became GraphAware Hume. But building a product was only the first step.
Finding our focus
The next challenge arrived quickly. We had a product but no clear market. We experimented across different industries. Some things worked. Many things didn’t.
One thing became clear. We had found a place where our technology delivered meaningful value, where customers renewed year after year, and where the mission mattered deeply: intelligence analysis for democratic government agencies.
Looking back, turning a consultancy into a product company without external funding or investment definitely wasn’t the conventional route, nor was it easy. But it was made possible by an exceptional team.
Some GraphAware team members have been with us for more than a decade. Their passion, resilience, and commitment carried us through difficult moments and helped us build something durable. I am deeply grateful to all of you.
Why Neo4j?
Throughout all of this, our relationship with Neo4j remained close. We partnered on customers, built trust over many years, and grew alongside one another.
As GraphAware continued to grow, eventually surpassing $10M in ARR, it became increasingly clear to me that we would benefit from a strategic partner at some point to help us reach the next stage.
But I was also very clear about what that partner needed to represent. This was never simply about growth, scale, or an exit. That’s why there were a few commitments I wasn’t willing to compromise on.
- The mission. I genuinely believe in our mission of serving intelligence analysts who make the world a safer place. I want to create things that leave a positive and healthy impact on the world.
- The product. I care deeply about GraphAware Hume and what our team has built together. I want to see it continue to improve, grow, and dominate the market.
- Our customers. Our customers took a chance on us when we were small. We owe them continued success.
- Our growth. GraphAware needs to grow so our people can grow too.
- The team. My ambition has always been that people look back on their time at GraphAware and feel it was worthwhile.
That is what eventually brought us to Neo4j, who I am convinced is the partner that meets all of these requirements. Not simply because of our shared history, although thirteen years of trust certainly matter, but because the alignment is real.
We understand each other’s technology, customers, and ambitions. We share a belief in the power of connected data to solve difficult problems. And we share a long-term commitment to building technology that creates real value.
Why now?
The timing matters too. To be transparent, we weren’t planning an acquisition for another few years. But the world accelerated. AI accelerated. Geopolitical change accelerated. Expectations around intelligence workflows, operational capability, and software innovation accelerated, too.
Our customers operate in environments where complexity is increasing, and the pace of change is increasing with it. Joining Neo4j helps us respond better to that reality.
The obvious question now is what this means going forward.
For our customers, it means continuity, and greater momentum. Our mission doesn’t change. Our focus doesn’t change. What changes is our ability to move faster.
Our roadmap will accelerate. Neo4j’s innovation, particularly around AI and agentic technologies, can flow directly into GraphAware Hume, giving us greater scale, deeper technical capability, and stronger long-term backing.
For our team, this acquisition creates new opportunities to grow, learn, and build with our new Neo4j colleagues. For GraphAware Hume, this creates the opportunity to become what we have always believed it can be: the gold standard for intelligence analysis tooling.
As for me, my role will change, but I’m not going anywhere. I’ll continue working with the team as General Manager of GraphAware — Powered by Neo4j.
This isn’t the end of the story. It’s the continuation of a journey that started almost thirteen years ago with a passion for graphs, a suggestion from Jim, and a belief that connected data can help people solve complex problems.
A final thank you
Finally, I want to end with a note of gratitude.
There are far too many people who have contributed to this journey to list individually, but whether you’re a current or former colleague, customer, partner, advisor, mentor, member of the Neo4j team, or friend: thank you. You helped build GraphAware.
I hope I get the chance to thank many of you in person, with a glass in hand, very soon.
Keep rocking,
Michal
