An infographic released by the website Big Data Startups (below) revealed that investors have poured $3.6 billion into big data startups for 2013, VentureBeat reported. This comprises nearly three quarters of the money that went into Big Data firms during four years from 2008 to 2012.

The infographic featured the top 10 data startups that were able to secure the most funds. Here are the top five: In first place is Palantir, the big data analytics solutions firm, nabbing $556 million. Document-oriented database mongoDB is in second with $231 million while data- science-as-a-service provider Mu Sigma got $208 million is in third. Cloudera, the Hadoop-based software, services and training firm is in fourth place with $141 million. Another data-science-as-a-service firm, Opera, landed in fifth place with $114 million.

According to the infographic, the biggest investors in big data startups are Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, IA Ventures, Khosla Ventures and New Enterprise Associates. The 19 big data firms in the portfolio of Lightspeed Venture Partners include Informatica, MapR, Origami Logic, Qubole, Real Time Genomics and TimesTen, the report said. Sequoia Capital and IA Ventures each have 13 big data startups in their portfolio while New Enterprise Associates and Khosla Ventures each have 12 companies.

The infographic also revealed that three big data funds worth $100 million also made an appearance in 2013. These include funds from KPMG Capital and Accel Partners. It also featured information about 50 acquisitions of startups focused on big data.

VentureBeat reported that investors and companies with a lot of cash on hand will still spend for big data startups. However, the report expects that investors will not be as desperate to back big data firms next year and 2015. In the next two years, data scientists should also grow in popularity among a lot of companies.