Cumulus Networks, which offers a Linux operating system environment for open networking, announced $43 million in new funding. Cumulus plans to expand its sales force and invest in growing its marketing programs, with a particular focus on reaching new customers in EMEA and Asia Pacific.
Cumulus's mission is "to free customers from expensive proprietary network stacks and bring the automation, agility and scalability of web-scale networks to companies of all sizes."
The company cited the following recent milestones:
- During 2017, the company signed over 350 new customers and now serves more than 800 customers, including over a third of the Fortune 50.
- Growth outside the U.S. was particularly strong. Cumulus tripled its business in the Asia Pacific region and more than doubled its business in EMEA during 2017.
- Cumulus Networks debuted in the Visionaries quadrant of the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking.
- In October 2017, Cumulus was inducted into the Innovation Hall of Fame by JP Morgan Chase.
- During 2017, the company released new solutions including NetQ, a telemetry-based fabric validation system; Host Pack, software essentials for the host enabling web-scale networking for containers, microservices and more; and Cumulus in the Cloud, a personal virtual data center to build and test network designs and operations.
The new funding round was led by Telstra Ventures. All existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures and Sequoia Capital participated. This brings total funding to $129 million.
“There’s a striking variety in our customer base, which ranges from large financial and healthcare institutions, to breakout SaaS stars, to some of the world’s largest Internet companies,” said Josh Leslie, CEO of Cumulus Networks. “But the common thread running through them is that they are challenging the status quo of networking in their organizations and reaping huge operational benefits as a result. We’re honored to partner with Telstra in this journey. We are excited to use this investment to bring modern, scalable networks to even more organizations around the world, particularly to service providers who are beginning to move into the networking space.”
Cumulus Networks is based in Mountain View, California.
