MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cumulus Networks, the leading provider bringing web-scale networking to enterprise cloud, has closed $43M in new funding in a round led by Telstra Ventures, the investment arm of Australia’s leading telecommunications and technology company, bringing total funding to $129 million. All existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures and Sequoia Capital participated. The company will use the investment to advance its mission: to free customers from expensive proprietary network stacks and bring the automation, agility and scalability of web-scale networks to companies of all sizes.
With the new funding, the company will massively expand its sales force and invest in growing its marketing programs, with a particular focus on reaching new customers in EMEA and Asia Pacific. It will also expand its footprint within Fortune 500 enterprises and service providers, while continuing to focus on bringing innovative networking products to market.
“Telstra Ventures is focused on investing in strategic, value-added businesses that show strong market fit and growth potential,” said Mark Sherman, Managing Director, Telstra Ventures. “In this case we had the advantage of being a Cumulus Networks customer first, which gave us several months of first-hand experience working with their products, services and team. After that experience, we were eager to expand our partnership and invest in the company. Open networking is key to growing service provider capabilities and we are thrilled to have Cumulus join our portfolio of strategic, innovative companies.”
“There’s a striking variety in our customer base, which ranges from large financial and healthcare institutions, to breakout SaaS stars, to some of the world’s largest Internet companies,” said Josh Leslie, CEO of Cumulus Networks. “But the common thread running through them is that they are challenging the status quo of networking in their organizations and reaping huge operational benefits as a result. We’re honored to partner with Telstra in this journey. We are excited to use this investment to bring modern, scalable networks to even more organizations around the world, particularly to service providers who are beginning to move into the networking space.”
The investment follows a year of strong growth for Cumulus Networks:
- During 2017, the company signed over 350 new customers and now serves more than 800 customers, including over a third of the Fortune 50.
- Growth outside the U.S. was particularly strong. Cumulus tripled its business in the Asia Pacific region and more than doubled its business in EMEA during 2017.
- Cumulus Networks debuted in the Visionaries quadrant of the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking.
- In October 2017, Cumulus was inducted into the Innovation Hall of Fame by JP Morgan Chase.
2017 also saw a significant expansion of the Cumulus product portfolio as the company released new solutions designed to make it even simpler to build an open network. New products included NetQ, a telemetry-based fabric validation system; Host Pack, software essentials for the host enabling web-scale networking for containers, microservices and more; and Cumulus in the Cloud, a personal virtual data center to build and test network designs and operations.
Mark Sherman from Telstra Ventures will attend meetings of the Cumulus Networks board of directors as an observer. His appointment follows 2017 appointments of board advisors Martin Casado, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and Mark Leslie, managing partner, Leslie Ventures.
About Cumulus Networks
Cumulus Networks is leading the transformation of bringing web-scale networking to enterprise cloud. As the only systems solution that fully unlocks the vertical network stacks of the modern data center, Cumulus Linux allows companies of all sizes to affordably build and efficiently operate their networks just like the world’s largest data centers. By allowing operators to use standard hardware components, Cumulus Networks offers unprecedented operational speed and agility, at the industry’s most competitive cost.
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