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]).
Datadog Barks Back to Cisco’s $7B Offer, Fetches $648M in IPODespite a reported $7 billion buyout attempt by Cisco, Datadog raised $648 million in its initial public offering selling 24 million shares for $27 each. The IPO values Datadog at $7.8 billion.
The monitoring and analytics company’s shares began trading Sept. 19 on the Nasdaq under the symbol “DDOG.”
In the weeks before its public debut, however, Cisco approached Datadog with a buyout offer, according to Bloomberg. That report said Cisco offered “significantly higher than the $7 billion valuation” that Datadog targeted in its IPO. The software company turned down Cisco because it believes it will be worth more than that as a public company, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources.
GitLab Inhales $268M Series E, Valuation Hits $2.75BGitLab raised a substantial $268 million in a Series E funding round that was more than double what the firm had raised across all of its previous funding rounds and pushed its valuation to $2.75 billion. It also bolstered the company’s coffers as it battles in an increasingly competitive DevOps space.
GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij said in an email to SDxCentral that the new Series E funds will help the company continue to move on its goal of providing a single application to support quicker delivery of software. It claims more than 100,000 organizations use its platform.
Cloudflare IPO Scorches Wall StreetCloudflare lit up Wall Street after raising $525 million in an IPO that surged past initial expectations.
The content delivery network (CDN) provider’s IPO attracted strong attention with the firm’s stock surging 20% on its debut. Cloudflare had initially priced its offer at between $10 to $12 per share before increasing the price tag to $15 per share just ahead of its launch on the New York Stock Exchange.
Prior to its IPO, Cloudflare raised more than $330 million in venture capital. Its latest haul in March raised $150 million, which pushed its valuation to more than $3 billion.
Other VC/M&A NewsAcquia announced its acquisition of enterprise, low-code Drupal website builder Cohesion to enable users with minimal coding skills to create Drupal websites and accelerate the creation of digital experiences.
Bessemer Venture Partners led a $50 million Series C funding round for data-centric personal data privacy and protection company BigID.
RDX completed the acquisition of Navisite LLC from Charter Communications to expand its network of data centers and bring in hundreds of certified experts in cloud-based infrastructure and application managed services. In addition to Navisite, RDX has acquired acquired database-as-a-service provider ClearDB, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) database migration and management specialists clckwrk.
Syte secured $21.5 million in Series B funding round to accelerate global expansion of its visual AI services. The round was led by Viola Ventures with contributions from, Storm Ventures, Commerce Ventures, and Axess Ventures, bringing Syte’s total funding to $30 million to date.
365 Data Centers completed its acquisition of NYI-NJ, a 25,000-square-foot data center in Bridgewater, New Jersey that offers an immediate 2.3MW of capacity 40 miles from New York City. This acquisition marks the eleventh addition to 365’s data center portfolio.
South-Carolina-based Hargray Communications declared its intent to acquire Infinity Network Solutions, an IT services company with operations in Macon and Covington, Georgia.
Private equity company TPG Capital secured a deal to acquire CollabNet VersionOne, a platform provider for Agile planning, DevOps, and value stream management from Vector Capital.
CIMCON closed a $33 million financing round led by Digital Alpha, which included a $23 million in Series C funding and a $10 million revenue-sharing facility.
Developer-first security company, Snyk, locked-in a $70 million investment led by Accel and existing investors GV and Boldstart Ventures, bringing total funding to $102 million to date.
Quantum computing start-up Q-CTRL completed a $15 million Series A round led by Australia’s largest venture capital fund, Square Peg Capital and Sierra Ventures with participation from existing investors including Sequoia Capital, Main Sequence Ventures, and Horizons Ventures.
Shape Security raised $51 million in growth funding led by C5 Capital that included returning investors Kleiner Perkins, HPE Growth, Norwest Ventures Partners, Focus Ventures, JetBlue Technology Ventures, Top Tier Capital Partners, and EPIC Ventures. This latest round of financing brought the company's total amount raised to $183 million with a pre-money valuation of $1 billion.
Switzerland-based cyber protection company Acronis announced a $147 million investment round led by Goldman Sachs and set the valuation of the company to over $1 billion. The funding will be used to expand its the Acronis engineering teams in Singapore, Bulgaria, and Arizona, build additional data centers, and grow through acquisitions.
StrongSalt completed a $3 million seed round of financing from Valley Capital Partners, thus backing the former founding engineer of FireEye to launch an encryption platform-as-a-service.
European data protection provider Atempo closed an $8.78 million funding round. Seed money will be used to boost research and development teams for Miria, the company’s platform for protection and migration of data sets. Financing was coordinated with IdVectoR, a deep tech long term investor and a banking pool comprising LCL, HSBC, Société Générale and the BPI (French Public Investment Bank).
Cowbell Cyber secured $3.3 million in seed funding from ManchesterStory Group, Holmes Murphy & Associates, Tri-Valley Ventures, and the Global Insurance Accelerator.
California-based data network platform provider STL penned a deal to acquire IDS Group, a European data center design and deployment company.
TigerGraph announced a $32 million Series B funding round led by SIG.
SaaS management platform Zylo locked-in a $22.5 million Series B funding round led by Menlo Ventures with returning investments from Bessemer Venture Partners, High Alpha, Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, and Salesforce Ventures, and the Slack Fund. Zylo has raised over $35 million since going to market in 2016.
ShieldIOT raised $3.6 million in a Series Seed funding round led by innogy Innovation Hub.
PerimeterX secured a $14 million extension to the $43 million in Series C funding it raised earlier this year, to a total of Series C funding of $57 million. The security company closed the round with a total capital of $91 million.
CenturyLink acquired video delivery innovator Streamroot in a move to enhance its content delivery network (CDN) and edge compute services.
Cloud security platform for enterprise innovation Lacework closed a $42 million financing round led by Sutter Hill Ventures and Liberty Global Ventures.
German software company TeamViewer announced the set price range for its IPO at up to $5.5 billion euros ($6.05 billion USD).
Automated malware analysis and detection company VMRay locked-in a $10 million Series B funding round led by Digital+ Partners with participation from eCapital. This latest round of financing brought the company's total funding to $12 million euros ($13.36 million USD).
Denver-based intelligent identity provider Ping Identity announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 12.5 million shares of its stock at $15.00 per share.
128 Technology raised $30 million in Series D financing with participation from all existing investors.
Fivetran completed a $44 million Series B funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation from existing investors Matrix Partners and CEAS Investments. The automated data integration platform provider plans to use the funding to strengthen its portfolio of automated products and hire across all office locations and roles.