On December 8th, 2006, Ingo Mierswa, the project leader of the open-source data mining project YALE, and Ralf Klinkenberg, who initiated this project in 2001, founded their start-up company Rapid-I, in order to better serve the needs of professional users of YALE and to provide innovative data mining solutions. Rapid-I is a software and consulting company helping its customers to significantly improve their efficiency and profitability with innovative data mining and business intelligence solutions.

On February 16th, 2007, the web site of the start-up company Rapid-I is launched to extend the web pages of the open-source data mining project YALE. Rapid-I is a software and consulting company helping its customers to significantly improve their efficiency and profitability with innovative data mining and business intelligence solutions. YALE remains open-source (GPL) and free of charge for end users. For closed-source software developers, an alternative developer license (OEM) is available. For and beyond YALE, Rapid-I also offers services like consulting, professional support, customization, and integration.