NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NS1, the leader in modern application and access networking, today announced that it has raised a $40 million Series D venture round led by Energy Impact Partners (EIP) with participation from existing investors, bringing the company’s total funding to $125 million. The investment, a testament to NS1’s growth, will support the company’s continued innovation and development of modern foundational technologies that power the connected economy.
Though IT modernization trends were well established, recent events have highlighted the importance of high-performing resilient applications and the critical infrastructure technology that supports them. With legacy internet and networking solutions under strain during the COVID-19 pandemic, NS1’s software-defined solutions provided the flexibility and scalability to keep its customers resilient and people connecting, streaming, innovating, and moving the world forward.
“The hyper-connectivity of today’s world has made IT transformation a business imperative. Meeting this demand depends on reliable IT operations and trusted technology partnerships,” said Bask Iyer, chief information officer and chief digital transformation officer, VMware. “Working with NS1 to implement its Managed DNS has helped us build a resilient, more secure and high performing network that improves customer experience, IT efficiency, and application reliability.”
Past investments from Cisco and Dell Technologies Capital created opportunities to extend NS1’s market reach and magnify the company’s distribution channel. The most recent round of funding, which represents a significant increase in valuation for the company, will allow NS1 to more aggressively invest in product innovation, and expand the company’s engineering capacity so it can continue to develop market-leading solutions that power the connected economy.
NS1 started 2020 with a rapid influx of new customers. In the first quarter, new customer bookings grew 159% year over year. The company now serves more than 600 enterprise customers, including many of the largest brands and most trafficked applications, such as LinkedIn, Dropbox, Salesforce, The Guardian, TomTom, and Pitney Bowes. And demand for NS1’s foundational technologies continues to accelerate as more organizations are modernizing application and access networking stacks in order to address the continued pressure to support new approaches to work and customer engagement.
“There is heightened urgency to expedite IT modernization. Five-year projects are being condensed to one year, and the only way to deliver on these aggressive timelines is by unlocking leverage in foundational application and networking infrastructure,” said Kris Beevers, co-founder and CEO, NS1. “This additional investment at a time of rapid growth at NS1 helps us capitalize on the market opportunity to meet the escalating demand for the modern foundational technologies used by every business, enabling them to quickly adapt to changing environments, more effectively control costs, and deliver reliable, secure, and exceptional user experiences.”
Shawn Cherian, partner at EIP, will join NS1’s Board of Directors as part of the round. Cherian said that EIP’s investment in NS1 represents a growing appetite from the firm’s limited partners to integrate with category-leading companies and invest in enterprise SaaS solutions. He cited NS1’s role in meeting connectivity requirements generated by the rapidly increasing number of connected devices as a primary area of growth.
“As enterprises shift to the cloud and their environments become more complex, fundamental infrastructure solutions, like those provided by NS1, will play a critical role in allowing companies to expand more effectively,” said Cherian. “NS1 is the leading next-generation DNS platform and has defined the standard for performance, resilience, and scale, which will continue to have broad applicability for internet services and solutions across verticals.”
Visit https://ns1.com/why-ns1 to learn more about how NS1 is making application and access networking smarter, more secure, more efficient, and more interesting to manage.
About NS1
NS1 automates the deployment and delivery of the world’s most trafficked internet and enterprise applications. Its software-defined, next-generation application networking stack modernizes DNS, DHCP, and IPAM — the familiar and universal foundations of all network and internet services — to unlock unprecedented automation, visibility, and control in today’s complex, heterogeneous environments. NS1 has more than 600 enterprise customers worldwide, including LinkedIn, Dropbox, Pitney Bowes, Bleacher Report, and The Guardian, and is backed by investments from Energy Impact Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, Cisco Investments, and GGV Capital.
About Energy Impact Partners
Energy Impact Partners (EIP) is a global investment platform leading the transition to a sustainable energy future. EIP brings together entrepreneurs and the world's most forward-looking utilities and operating companies to advance innovation. With over $1.5 billion in assets under management, EIP invests globally across venture, growth, credit and infrastructure – and has a team of more than 45 professionals based in its offices in New York, San Francisco, Palm Beach, London, and Cologne. For more information on EIP, please visit www.energyimpactpartners.com.
