Here are some of the most prominent venture capital (VC) and merger and acquisition (M&A) 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]).
Cisco Buys Acacia Communications
Cisco is set to acquire Acacia Communications for $2.6 billion in a move to boost its optical networking portfolio.
Acacia, which is an existing Cisco supplier, makes high-speed optical interconnect products for webscale companies, service providers, and data center operators.
“The acquisition of Acacia will allow us to build on the strength of our switching, routing and optical networking portfolio to address our customers’ most demanding requirements,” said David Goeckeler, executive vice president and general manager of Cisco’s networking and security business, in a prepared statement.
The companies expect the acquisition to close during the second half of Cisco’s fiscal 2020. At that time Acacia employees will join Cisco’s optical systems and optics business within the networking and security business under Goeckeler.
IBM closed its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat in a bid to fundamentally reframe IBM’s role and opportunity in open source and hybrid cloud development. Red Hat will become a subsidiary of IBM.
There are no plans to combine operations, offices, channel partner programs, or how the businesses approach the needs of their respective clients.
“This acquisition is not about cost synergy,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president of cloud and cognitive software at IBM, during a conference call with analysts.
There is no discussion of layoffs, all offices will remain, and, although Krishna estimates there’s maybe a 5% overlap in capabilities in middleware, the products and services delivered by both companies will be maintained and further innovated upon going forward, he said.
The Red Hat brand and name is also staying just the same and company executives say they have no desire to meld the cultures of both companies.
Other VC/M&A News
CircleCI secured $56 Million in Series D bringing its total funding to $115.5 million.
Rancher Labs recorded a 161% year-on-year revenue growth, increasing its customer base 52% since January 2019. The container management software provider closed a $25 million Series C funding round, brought in one new investor: F&G Ventures. The new round brings the total amount raised by the company to $55 million.
Balena brought in a $14.4 million Series B investment led by OpenView, with participation from existing investors including Threshold Ventures, Aspect Ventures, and GE Ventures.
Privacy platform provider DataGrail raised $9.2 million with investor Cloud Apps Capital leading the round just ahead of two new privacy laws: CCPA and Nevada SB 220.
Connected2Fiber secured $5.3 million in the latest round of funding from Ascent Venture Partners, Osage Venture Partners, Nauta Capital, and NXT Ventures.
Connecticut-based private equity firm Brighton Park Capital was the sole investor in a $30 million Series A funding round for network infrastructure management solution provider AppViewX.
Digita Security, creators of enterprise endpoint protection built exclusively for Apple's Mac platform, was acquired by Jamf for an undisclosed amount.
Verified identity platform provider Truework locked-in $12 million in Series A financing led by Sequoia Capital.
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