News Article
Actifio Joins $1 Billion Valuation Club With $100M Investment
March 27, 2014
Unnecessary copies of data have a tendency to proliferate inside companies, clogging IT systems and slowing the pace of business because the data can be hard to find. 
After another year of triple-digit growth, Actifio Inc. has raised $100 million to keep working on this problem, in an oversubscribed round led by Tiger Global Management.
The round values Actifio at $1.1 billion, more than double the $500 million valuation it received just a year ago, and is another sign of investors’ intense interest in pre-IPO technology companies.
Earlier this month, late-stage technology investor Tiger Global led a $77 million round in the online small business lender OnDeck Capital Inc., and it co-led a $60 million investment in the online ticketing company Eventbrite Inc. at more than a $1 billion valuation.
Current investors North Bridge Venture Partners, Greylock IL, Advanced Technology Ventures, Technology Crossover Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz also participated in the new round for Actifio. The company could have raised $125 million, according to founder and Chief Executive Ash Ashutosh, but turned money away.
“There’s a complete technology disruption underway…the existing incumbents are on their way out,” said Mr. Ashutosh, a former partner at Greylock who’s also worked in the storage industry for about 25 years. “When you look at how much cash balance they have…they don’t know how to spend it on innovation. They don’t see a way out.”
Actifio is one of several young companies that are streamlining and simplifying IT infrastructure by making it cheaper and easier to use, attacking older technology companies in the process.
Older computing infrastructure ties software applications to a specific server, forcing IT to create, move and store copies of whatever data the app creates so it can be used for analytics, compliance, disaster recovery or other IT tasks.
Using virtualization, Actifio decouples apps and data, creating a single copy of data that can be reused.
“Now the data is the data, and you bring it up and leave it—the app comes up instantly from any point in time at any location. It completely changes the trajectory of how businesses access information,” Mr. Ashutosh said.
The new money will be used to expand sales, marketing and what Mr. Ashotosh calls “customer success,” helping customers use Actifio to transform how they do business.
The company now has more than 300 customers in more than 30 countries and has no timetable for an IPO, he said, although it will continue to try and grow as fast as possible. If staying private become inhibiting, the company will go public, Mr. Ashutosh said, but “our investors have a long time horizon.”
Actifio has now raised $207.5 million. Of the current round, the company closed $75 million on March 14 and has commitments for the rest by April 7.