In a sign of the growing importance of the Internet "cloud," software group Cloudera said Monday it raised a whopping $900 million to expand its big data corporate services.

US chip giant Intel is leading the financing with a "significant" investment which will give it an 18 percent stake in Cloudera, the companies said.

The move highlights the importance of cloud services, which can store data from computers and a range of devices including appliances, cars and wearables connected to the Internet.

Tom Reilly, Cloudera's chief executive, said the investment means "Cloudera will be the company to lead this global shift in extracting value from data."

Intel said it was making its largest-ever data center technology investment for a project "making it easier for companies of all sizes to obtain increased business value from data."

The collaboration comes with tech firms looking for opportunities to bring together data from the "Internet of Things," which can include items ranging from coffee cups to tractors.

Cloudera uses a system powered by Apache Hadoop, an open-source software which can store and process huge amounts of data efficiently.

"By aligning the Cloudera and Intel roadmaps, we are creating the platform of choice for big data analytics," said Diane Bryant, senior vice president of Intel's Data Center Group

"We expect to accelerate industry adoption of the Hadoop data platform and enable companies to mine their data for insights that inform the business. This collaboration spans our data center technology from compute to network, security and storage, and extends to our initiatives for the Internet of Things."