WhiteGold boost as Nutanix raises US$101m
In what can be seen as a boost for New Zealand distributor WhiteGold Solutions, Nutanix, the leading provider of next-generation data center infrastructure solutions, has closed its US$101m Series D financing co-led by Riverwood Capital and SAP Ventures.
Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and Greenspring Associates also participated in the round as new investors, joining existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures and Battery Ventures in the largest single financing round in the history of the converged infrastructure market.
The company has now raised a total of $172.2m in four rounds of funding which will help accelerate its global expansion, boost investments in research and development, expand its service delivery capabilities and grow its sales, marketing and support teams.
“Adoption of web-scale computing, and Nutanix’s Virtual Computing Platform in particular, has grown explosively over the last two years, yet we’ve only scratched the surface of this $100 billion hybrid computing market,” says Dheeraj Pandey, CEO, Nutanix.
“The additional support from such a high-quality investor group leaves us uniquely positioned to capitalize on the opportunity and build one of the elite companies of this decade.”
After entering a distribution agreement with WhiteGold across the ANZ markets in August last year, Nutanix is now uniquely capitalised to service the needs of global enterprise customers with backing from top Silicon Valley venture capital firms.
Jeff Parks, a founding partner of Riverwood Capital and former executive at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., has been named to the Nutanix board of directors and in a separate appointment, industry veteran Mike Scarpelli, CFO of ServiceNow and former CFO of Data Domain, has also been named to Nutanix’s board of directors.
“Nutanix is one of a very small class of companies that is transforming the way enterprises deliver IT,” Parks says.
“We are very excited to partner with Dheeraj Pandey and his world-class management team as they build the next-generation enterprise computing company.”
Nutanix has also exceeded $100m in lifetime sales, acquiring 13 customers who have purchased more than $1m of products within two years of launching its award-winning Virtual Computing Platform, cementing its status as the fastest-growing infrastructure company of the decade.
Due to an aggressive global expansion strategy, international sales now account for 33 percent of the business and the company has shipped product to more than 30 countries in the last six months.
“Lightspeed has invested in more than 200 companies and Nutanix ranks best-in-class in terms of sales velocity,” adds Ravi Mhatre, founding partner of Lightspeed Venture Partners.
“We continue to be impressed with the execution by the company and welcome our new investors to the team.”
According to Nutanix VP of accounting Ken Long, the company’s commitment to developing game-changing technology and providing industry-leading customer support coupled with its unrivaled scale-out architecture has enabled the business to achieve extraordinary repeat purchase rates.
“More than 50 percent of Nutanix customers purchase again after only six months and nearly 70 percent purchase additional units within 12 months,” he adds.
