Here are some of the most prominent venture capital and merger and acquisition news items from the past month. If you’d like SDxCentral to report on your company’s VC or M&A activity, or if you have any tips on that activity, please send the information to Sydney Sawaya ([email protected]).
Nokia Stares Down Hostile Takeover BidNokia is fending off a reported hostile takeover attempt that could dramatically alter the wireless network equipment market.
“Nokia does not comment on market rumors,” a company spokesperson told SDxCentral.
The hostile takeover bid, which was reported by TMT Finance and cited by Reuters, follows a late February report from Bloomberg that claimed the company was considering potential asset sales or mergers to improve its outlook. Nokia dismissed that report as speculative at the time and declined to comment further.
Does Google Want to Buy D2iQ?Google wants to buy cloud-native software company D2iQ, formerly Mesosphere, to bring its Kubernetes offerings in house, according to an Axios report.
Axios, citing “a source close to the situation,” reported that D2iQ would be valued north of $250 million, but less than its $775 million valuation following its Series D round in 2018. However, at least one board member opposed the deal, Axios says.
Buying D2iQ could help Google better target developers, Axios reports. And indeed the No. 3 cloud provider has been on a buying spree under CEO Thomas Kurian in his first year on the job, spending billions on acquisitions in its quest to catch up to Amazon and Microsoft.
T-Mobile to Slash $30M in Cloud Costs With KubernetesT-Mobile US has found success with Kubernetes and currently operates 20,000 containers across its virtualized cloud infrastructure. In fact, over the next year the carrier claims the combination of centralized management of Kubernetes containers and a normalized approach to clusters will help it to slash $30 million in cloud costs.
From building applications manually, progressing to automation, and then implementing container-based workloads at scale, T-Mobile’s centralized cloud team has laid “bedrock foundations in place to deliver consistent cloud consumption in a large organization,” said Thom McCann, senior manager and software engineer at T-Mobile.
That foundation is called Conducktor, which is T-Mobile’s internal Kubernetes platform. It has enabled the carrier’s cloud team to establish a common way to access the cloud, applications, security, and enabling applications teams to self-serve in their own organizations.
Other VC/M&A NewsSecret Double Octopus, the passwordless enterprise authentication service provider, not so secretly announced the closing of a $15 million Series B funding round.
Rackspace has reportedly filed for an initial public offering (IPO) that could value the managed cloud services company at more than $10 billion, according to Reuters.
Alkira emerged from the shadows with the launch of its first product and $30 million of Series A funding.
Awake Security raised $36 million in Series C financing bringing its total raised to nearly $80 million. The company said it will use the capital to meet the growing demand for the network detection and response platform.
Vast Data nearly tripled its valuation to $1.2 billion in a $100 million Series C funding round, bringing its total funding to $180 million.
Palo Alto Networks completed its acquisition of CloudGenix.
Alibaba Group is reportedly investing $28 billion into its cloud platform over the next three years in an attempt to bolster support for services that have surged in light of the COVID-19 virus outbreak.
Cisco announced $2.5 billion in special financing in a bid to help businesses overcome the economic challenges brought on by COVID-19 and efforts to contain the spread of the virus.
Zscaler will acquire Cloudneeti for an undisclosed amount in a deal that adds cloud security posture management to its platform.
Data management startup Cohesity announced a $250 million Series E funding round that more than doubled its valuation to $2.5 billion.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) committed to make more than $2 billion in financing available to its customers that are strapped for cash amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The move could boost purchases of HPE’s hardware and software in the short term and thereby lessen the virus’ drag on its 2020 outlook.
Secure access service edge vendor (SASE) Cato Networks announced it secured $77 million in its latest and largest funding round to date.
Cisco announced plans to acquire Fluidmesh Networks, a wireless backhaul vendor specializing in high speed and widely distributed environments, including mass transit, industrial IoT, ports, mines, and factories. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Cisco said it expects the acquisition to close before the end of the year.
IDC's Global IT spending projections slid from positive to negative territory in a matter of weeks. The market, which includes hardware, software, and IT services, is now expected to decline at a greater rate than gross domestic product overall, according to a new report from the research firm.
NetApp acquired virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) provider CloudJumper for an undisclosed amount in a deal that propels the data services company into the remote desktop market.
Equinix inked a second $1 billion-plus deal with GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, to develop and operate hyperscale data centers in Japan.
CyberMDX, a connected medical device and clinical network security firm, collected $20 million in new funding, bringing its accumulated fundraising to $30 million.
Concertio scored $4.2 million in seed funding to scale its AIOps operations.
Dell Technologies announced $9 billion in special financing in a bid to jumpstart IT investment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Accellion secured a $120 million financing round led by Bregal Sagemount.
Nvidia announced the completion of its acquisition of Mellanox Technologies in a transaction valued at $7 billion.
T-Mobile US officially closed its acquisition of Sprint, which unites the domestic market's No. 3 and No. 4 mobile operators.
Accenture acquired Revolutionary Security, a privately held company specializing in enterprise cybersecurity for IT and OT environments, for an undisclosed amount.
Big Data Exchange is even bigger following the is acquisition of a data center located in Paya Lebar, Singapore, which was formerly owned by Telstra.
CircleCI raised a $100 million Series E funding round led by IVP with Sapphire Ventures also participating, bringing its total amount raised to $215 million.
StorMagic penned a deal to acquire KeyNexus, an encryption key management service.
Behavioral biometrics company BioCatch closed a $145 million Series C funding round led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities.
Cellnex reached an agreement with the Portuguese mobile operator NOS for the acquisition of of NOS Towering.
Koch Industries announced that it closed on the acquisition of Infor.
Open source cloud data orchestration software developer Alluxio extended its Series B financing to $15.5 million, co-led by new investor Volcanics Ventures and existing investor a16z.
Vercel raised $21 million in Series A funding led by Accel and CRV.
Applied Blockchain scored $2.5 million in a funding round led by Hong Kong-based QBN Capital.
Event streaming platform provider Confluent announced a $250 million Series E round, valuing the company at $4.5 billion.
San Francisco-based digital identity company ForgeRock completed a $93.5 million Series E funding round.
BCM One acquired nexVortex, a Herndon, Virginia-based provider of managed network SIP trunking services.
Accenture reached an agreement to purchase French cloud services company Gekko.
Rapid7 entered into a definitive agreement to acquire DivvyCloud.