Follow The Money: 12 Tech Venture Capital Investments In August
Show Me The Money
The weather may start to cool as August gives way to September. But venture capital activity for IT startups remains hot, with several reporting funding rounds of $100 million or more. Altogether, the startups on this month's list raised nearly $480 million.
As has been the case in recent months, a lot of money flowed to young companies in the big data and security technology arenas. Other startups being funded are in next-generation storage systems, cloud system appliances, OpenStack software and project management applications.
AlienVault
Headquarters: San Mateo, Calif.
CEO: Barmak Meftah
New funding: $52 million
Round: Series E
Backers: Institutional Venture Partners, Trident Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and GGV Capital
AlienVault develops a unified threat management platform called Unified Security Management, as well as a large, crowd-sourced, threat-intelligence network called the Open Threat Exchange. The two are especially geared toward midmarket and smaller enterprise companies that require significant, effective security infrastructures, but lack some of the resources of big corporations.
This round brings the company's total financing to $116 million.
Bastille
Headquarters: Atlanta
CEO: Chris Rouland
New funding: $9 million
Round: Series A
Backers: Bessemer Venture Partners, Bastille founder and CEO Chris Rouland and cybersecurity entrepreneur Tom Noonan
Bastille calls itself the first cybersecurity company for the Internet of Things, developing technology that detects and mitigates threats that are unintended consequences of the growth of IoT systems. The company's platform, now under development, will use next-generation sensors and software to detect, localize and assess security risks by scanning devices that operate on more than 100 distinct protocols.
Bastille's product is operating in pilot projects within several financial institutions and at companies in other vertical industries. It's slated for general availability in early 2016.
BlueData Software
Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.
CEO: Kumar Sreekanti
New funding: $20 million
Round: Series C
Backers: Intel Capital, Amplify Partners, Atlantic Bridge and Ignition Partners
BlueData Software develops the BlueData EPIC software platform that businesses use to deploy big data applications and infrastructure. The platform utilizes virtualization technology to make it easier and more cost-effective for businesses to enable Hadoop-as-a-Service in an on-premise deployment model.
At the same time as the funding announcement, BlueData and Intel said they would collaborate to develop BlueData's big data infrastructure software for Intel's data center architecture that's based on the Intel Xeon processor technology. The two are also launching joint go-to-market efforts around the combined technologies, including channel and sales programs.
Dapulse
Headquarters: Tel Aviv
CEO: Roy Man
New funding: $2.6 million
Round: Series A
Backers: Genesis Partners and Entre Capital
Dapulse develops what it calls the next generation of project management software, providing Software-as-a-Service project management applications with team collaboration capabilities and visual representations of workflows. The company was founded in 2012 and currently has 1,800 customers.
Datameer
Headquarters: San Francisco
CEO: Stefan Groschupf
New funding: $40 million
Round: Series E
Backers: ST Telemedia, Top Tier Capital Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Redpoint, Next World Capital and Software AG
Datameer provides big data integration, analytics and visualization software that's built to work with the Hadoop big data platform.
The new funding brings Datameer's total financing to $76 million. CEO Stefan Groschupf told CRN that Datameer would use the money to continue hiring across the company and accelerate its global expansion -- especially in Asia and Latin America. That includes investing in the company's channel strategy, such as partnering with regional systems integrators in North America and Europe.
Mirantis
Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.
CEO: Adrian Ionel
New funding: $100 million
Round: Series C
Backers: Intel Capital, Goldman Sachs, August Capital, Insight Venture Partners, Ericsson, Sapphire Ventures and WestSummit Capital
Mirantis calls itself the "pure play" OpenStack company, providing software, services, training and support for customers running the OpenStack open-source technology that organizations deploy as cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service platforms.
At the time of the funding announcement, Mirantis also unveiled a strategic technology collaboration deal with investor Intel under which the two companies will develop capabilities for enterprise OpenStack deployments. Intel is involved as part of its broader "Cloud for All" initiative.
Mode Analytics
Headquarters: San Francisco
CEO: Derek Steer
New funding: $7.5 million
Round: Series A
Backers: Foundation Capita, Goldcrest Capital and Arnold Capital
Startup Mode Analytics, which launched just over a year ago, develops what it calls a collaborative analytics platform that businesses use to access and analyze data in such disparate sources as Amazon RedShift, Google BigQuery, Hive/Impala, MySQL, Postgres and Presto.
The company previously raised $2.55 million in two earlier rounds of seed funding.
Nok Nok Labs
Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.
CEO: Phillip Dunkelberger
New funding: $8 million
Round: Series C
Backers: DaouKiwoom Group, Docomo Capital, Thundersoft, DCM Ventures, Lenovo Group, Onset Ventures, Raven Ventures and related affiliates
Nok Nok Labs develops client and server software that leverages the security capabilities of mobile devices, such as built-in fingerprint sensors, cameras or Trusted Platform Modules, to provide strong authentication to any application.
The company will use the new funding to expand its sales, support and channel infrastructure; expand to meet growing demand in the Asia Pacific region; and continue to develop its technology around and beyond the FIDO (fast identity online) standard specifications.
Talena
Headquarters: Milpitas
CEO: Nitin Donde
New funding: $12 million
Round: Series A
Backers: Canaan Partners, Intel Capital, Onset Ventures and Wipro Ventures
Startup Talena exited stealth mode in August, debuting its Talena Big Data Availability management software that's designed to optimize data management across such processes as application development and test, database management, backup and recovery, and data recovery.
Talena has been working directly with early-adopter customers for about three months. The company will use the new financing to expand its sales and marketing efforts and start selling its product more widely. Ultimately that will include working through multiple channels, including solution providers, systems integrators and data platform resellers.
Tintri
Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.
CEO: Ken Klein
New funding: $125 million
Round: Series F
Backers: Silver Lake Kraftwerk, Insight Venture Partners, Lightspeed ventures, Menlo Ventures and NEA
Tintri develops storage systems, including hybrid and all-flash systems, which are specifically designed for cloud and virtualized environments. The company said it has recorded triple-digit, year-over-year growth.
This funding round brings Tintri's total financing to $260 million. The company plans to use the latest funding to accelerating "global adoption of VM-aware storage."
ZeroStack
Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.
CEO: Ajay Gulati
New funding: $5.6 million
Round: Series A
Backers: Foundation Capital
Startup ZeroStack emerged from stealth mode in August, debuting its private cloud appliance, which combines an on-premise, hyper-converged system with a Software-as-a-Service platform. The ZeroStack Cloud Platform brings together compute, storage, networking and management software while the SaaS layer provides monitoring, troubleshooting, capacity planning and chargeback capabilities.
The company says its product significantly reduces the time and complexity of deploying and running private cloud systems with a 40 percent to 60 percent lower cost of ownership compared with alternative solutions.
ZScaler
Headquarters: San Jose
CEO: Jay Chaudhry
New funding: $100 million
Round: Series B
Backers: TPG, EMC and Lightspeed Ventures
Zscaler developed a Security-as-a-Service platform that integrates firewalls, Web security, mobile security, Internet-of-Things security and data loss prevention capabilities in a single offering.
Zscaler said sales in its fiscal year ended July 31 were double those of the previous fiscal year, and some expect the company to go public in the near future.
