Bare-metal cloud startup Packet closed a $25 million Series B funding round let by Third Point Ventures. New investors Battery Ventures, JA Mitsui Leasing, and Samsung NEXT, as well as existing investors SoftBank Corp. and Dell Technologies Capital also participated. This brings its total funding to $36.6 million.

In addition to the new funding, Packet updated its cloud automation platform to enable bare metal installations in under 60 seconds. It also recently appointed former Equinix exec Ihab Tarazi as chief technology officer and named former Virtuozzo CEO George Karidis as chief operations officer.

The company plans to use the funding to expand its product, engineering, sales, and marketing teams; develop new locations as part of its edge product; and release an on-premise version of its cloud software.

Packet says its cloud is available in 18 global locations and supports more than 60,000 bare metal installs each month. It’s also building an edge computing network with 50 new sites under development.

“The challenge of putting a lot of the same things in a few places with current hyperscale models is very different from putting a lot of different things in a lot of places,” said Jacob Smith, senior vice president of engagement for Packet. "The supply chain is more of a challenge.”

This led Smith to downplay the amount of funding raised: “$25 million is really a minuscule amount for this.”

Packet also recently published its first “State of the Edge” report. In a departure from the hyperscale cloud model, the company wants physical and supply chain partners to participate in this disaggregated and expanding edge ecosystem.

“Edge needs to be as cheap or cheaper than hyperscale costs,” Smith said. “It has to be, or it won’t make sense financially.”

This also requires distributed and specialized hardware, and to that end Packet says it’s working with global suppliers to accelerate the availability of hardware innovation.

As part of this effort, Thao Nyugen joined Packet as director of hardware platforms. Coming from Facebook, he led the development and deployment of over 1 million Open Compute Project (OCP) servers in the last eight years.