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 in our monthly Money Moves section, or if you have any tips on that activity, please send the information to Sydney Sawaya ([email protected]).

Lacework Scores $525M to Battle Palo Alto Networks

Cloud security startup Lacework closed a $525 million Series D funding round that brings its total raised to just over $600 million and pushed its valuation “well over $1 billion,” according to CEO Dan Hubbard.

The latest investment follows two years of more than 300% revenue growth from customers including VMware, Arista, Pure Storage, and Snowflake — Snowflake Ventures is also an investor and its participation in the funding round marks its largest strategic information security investment to date at $20 million — and Hubbard’s already set his sights on a third year of triple-digit growth. He also plans to double the company’s staff, from about 200 now to more than 400 by the end of the year, and grow Lacework’s engineering and R&D teams across the U.S. and Europe.

Linux Foundation Gobbles Open19, Adds Cisco

The Open19 Foundation — an open data center hardware initiative founded in 2016 by LinkedIn, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and VaporIO — became a Linux Foundation project. It officially made the move on Jan. 1, after Open19 added Cisco as a board member late last year.

“We [Open19] are the primary open hardware platform for the Linux Foundation membership,” said Open19 Foundation president Zachary Smith. “And now we have two of the three largest OEMs — HPE and Cisco — adopting and supporting Open19, as well as a wide variety of ODMs.”

Open19 is an open platform for servers, storage, and networking that can fit in any 19-inch data center rack environment. Its form factor specifications include a brick cage as well as various server bricks, a power shelf, and blind-mate power and data connectors.

Cisco Will Pay Acacia $4.5B in On-Again Acquisition

Cisco and Acacia Communications moved forward with their merger after all — but it cost about $2 billion more than the original price. The two companies said they amended their acquisition agreement, and Cisco will buy Acacia for $4.5 billion. Under the original 2019 deal, Cisco planned to pay $2.6 billion for the optics vendor.

But the deal almost didn’t happen.

Cisco originally announced plans to acquire the small optical firm in July 2019, and at the time expected the deal to close by the end of that year. However, the deal stalled after the Chinese government’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) refused to approve the acquisition.

Acacia said it terminated the acquisition because China didn’t greenlight it by Jan. 8. Cisco, however, said it did receive Chinese approval on Jan. 7, and filed a lawsuit to force Acacia to close the deal. On Jan. 12, Acacia filed a countersuit.

Movers and Shakers

Dremio, a data analytics storage startup, closed a $135 million Series D round, lifting its valuation to an even $1 billion and into unicorn status.

HelpSystems acquired enterprise file transfer acceleration company FileCatalyst. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

T-Mobile US signed a pair of five-year contracts with Ericsson and Nokia to supply 5G radio access network (RAN) equipment for its ongoing $40 billion network upgrade.

Juniper networks closed on its acquisition of Apstra.

Intel invested a further $475 million in Intel Products Vietnam. This takes Intel’s total investment in its Vietnam facility to $1.5 billion.

TPG Capital signed a definitive agreement to acquire a majority stake in Centrify from Thoma Bravo. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Next-generation remote access and remote support provider Splashtop collected $50 million in new financing that pushed its valuation beyond the coveted $1 billion unicorn status.

Quantum Metric bagged a massive $200 million Series B funding round led by Insight Partners at a valuation exceeding $1 billion.

Search-as-a-service company Algolia purchased MorphL, a Google Digital News Initiative-funded startup, for an undisclosed amount.

Starburst Data, an analytics software provider, scored a $100 million Series C funding round bringing its valuation to $1.2 billion.

Communication Technology Services (CTS) acquired ClearSky Technologies.

Francisco Partners completed its acquisition of Forcepoint.

Red Hat announced its plans to acquire StackRox and fold the startup’s Kubernetes-native security technology into its OpenShift Kubernetes platform. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Quali secured $54 million in new funding, co-led by Greenfield Partners and JVP.

F5 Networks penned a deal to acquire application security startup Volterra in a deal that could reach $500 million.

Samsung could spend north of $10 billion to bring its semiconductor manufacturing capabilities to the U.S., Bloomberg reported.

Quest Software acquired data modeling and governance provider erwin Inc.

Workato, an integration-led automation provider, announced a $110 million Series D funding round led by global investment firm Altimeter Capital. The investment brings the total capital raised by the company to over $221 million and values Workato at $1.7 billion.

RecVue raised $13 million in a Series A round led by Cota Capita.

Australian-based archTIS Limited closed its $7.1 million acquisition of advanced information protection services provider Nucleus Cyber.

Pinecone (formerly HyperCube) emerged from stealth with a $10 million funding purse led by Wing Venture Capital.

Navisite purchased cloud managed service provider (MSP) Velocity Technology Solutions for an undisclosed amount.

Valtix secured $12.5 million in new financing from Cisco Investments, Northgate Capital, and The Syndicate Group.

IBM announced its acquisition of 7Summits, and also entered an agreement to acquire Taos, a cloud professional and managed services provider. Financial details of both transactions were not disclosed.

LogRhythm acquired threat detection platform MistNet.

Cockroach Labs scored $160 million in Series E financing and a beefy $2 billion valuation.

Veritas Technologies bought Ontario-based backup-as-a-service company HubStor for an undisclosed amount.

Behavioral data management platform provider Snowplow secured $10 million in Series A2 funding led by Atlantic Bridge.

Molecula bagged a $17.6 million Series A round of funding, bringing its total funding to $23.6 million. The round was led by Drive Capital, with participation from TTV Capital and existing investors including Tensility.

Harness raised $115 million in new financing, reaching a valuation of $1.7 billion.

Deloitte Consulting completed its acquisition of cloud-native software engineering and product development firm HashedIn Technologies Private Limited.

Accenture acquired Argentinean cloud-native and agile development company Wolox.

Managed detection and response (MDR) provider Huntress penned a deal to purchase network-aware endpoint detection and response (EDR) technology from San Antonio-based startup Level Effect.

Swimlane, a security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) service provider, scored $40 million in funding led by EIP.

StackPulse, an automated incident response platform aimed at site reliability engineers, emerged from stealth with $28 million in funding.

Ctrl IQ made its market debut with a $4 million in Series A backing from OpenDrives and IAG Capital Partners.

DataCore Software acquired Caringo for an undisclosed amount.