Here are some of the most prominent venture capital and merger and acquisition news items from November. 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 Julia King ([email protected]).

Dish Network remains confident it will meet upcoming build out deadlines for its unique 5G network, but just in case it’s raising an additional $2 billion to help facilitate that construction.

The nascent wireless network operator filed paperwork to raise that capital through a senior secured notes offering. Proceeds will be used for the usual “general corporate purposes,” but more specifically “the buildout of wireless infrastructure.”

Dish launched commercial 5G services in mid-June, just hitting a government-mandated deadline tied to some of its spectrum licenses. Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen previously stated that the full 5G network build could run Dish in the neighborhood of $10 billion, which he explained could be spread out until 2025. Read more. 

Cato Networks announced that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) grew from $1 million to $100 million in five years, designating the secure access service edge (SASE) vendor a “centaur” shortly after it achieved unicorn status in 2020.

VP of Product Marketing Eyal Webber-Zvik called the designation an “empiric metric of startup success,” rather than what he said is typically a more “fluid” ranking based on valuations.

“Ranking everybody above $1 billion valuation – and especially before the recession, there were too many of those – it was very hard to clear through the noise,” he told SDxCentral. “Centaur means a company has proven that [it] can sell at least $100 million in annual revenue.” Read more.

Cloudbrink emerged from stealth with a new take on network access that it claims will provide “what SD-WAN vendors have been promising, but so far failed to deliver.”

The startup is backed with $25 million in funding led by Highland Capital Partners and The Fabric. Its product is a “hybrid-access-as-a-service” (HAaaS) networking solution that involves no hardware or upgrades to existing broadband lines, but instead uses the company’s Brink App which can run on laptop or other devices, like a home Wi-Fi router.

The “crucial difference” is that SD-WAN solutions typically involve a dual broadband link and some special hardware to terminate it, according to Cloudbrink. Read more. 

MHS Global and Fortna announced a merger.

Alation Inc, raised $123 million in a Series E funding led by Thoma Bravo, Sanabil Investments, and Costanoa Ventures.

Apiiro raised $100 million in Series B funding led by General Catalyst.

Darwinium announced a seed funding round of $10 million led by Blackbird and Airtree.

11:11 Systems acquired Sungard Availability Services’ Recovery Business and Cloud Managed Services Business.

HUMAN Security, Inc. acquired clean.io.

Island raised $60 million in Series B funding led by Georgian.

PwC acquired Sagence.

Appfire acquired Nextup.ai.

Thrive acquired Custard Technical Services.

BoostSecurity emerged from stealth with $12 million in seed funding.

Bishop Fox raised $129 million in Series B funding led by WestCap.

Namecoach raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Impact America Fund.

Astera Labs announced a $150 million Series D funding round led by Fidelity Management and Research.

BAI Communications acquired ZenFi Networks.

Accenture acquires ALBERT.

SPHERE Technology Solutions announced a $31 million Series B investment led by Edison Partners.

RegScale acquired GovReady.

Sentry acquired Codecov.

Deepgram raised $47 million in equity funding led by Madrona.

Open Systems acquired Tiberium.