Pentaho, an open source “business intelligence” company, said it has raised a $12 million third round of funding Benchmark Capital.

The funding comes at a time of significant consolidation in the estimated $6.25 billion business intelligence industry: Within the last year, Oracle has acquired Hyperion, SAP acquired Business Objects and IBM acquired Cognos.

Existing investors Index Ventures and New Enterprise Associates also joined the round.

The investment is a predictable one by Benchmark, even if the firm prides itself on trying to be contrarian. Benchmark’s partner Peter Fenton continues to back open source companies, and the business intelligence sector is just the latest area he is going after.
Benchmark also bet on open source companies Red Hat, Zimbra, and MySQL.

The four-year-old company says it has had three million lifetime downloads, and has more than 20,000 registered community members. It says customers include Cox Communications, Monsanto Corporation, Savvion, Sun Microsystems and U.S. Naval Air Command.