Cohesity announces $250 million funding, doubles valuation to US$2.5 billion

Cohesity has announced US$250 million in Series E funding, bringing the company's valuation to US$2.5 billion - more than double the valuation from its Series D round less than two years ago.

With the new funding, Cohesitys' total funding since inception exceeds US $650 million.

The new funding is led by DFJ Growth, Foundation Capital, Greenspring Associates, and Wing Venture Capital. DFJ Growth and Greenspring Associates are new investors, as are Baillie Gifford and Sozo Ventures.

The round also includes broad support from existing investors, including Sequoia Capital and SoftBank Vision Fund 1, as well as strategic investors Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Cisco Investments.

Mohit Aron, chief executive and founder at Cohesity says the "funding recognises the traction Cohesity is seeing in the market as a disruptive, software-defined data management company.

"Cohesity radically simplifies the way businesses back up, manage, protect, and extract value from their data -- in the data center, at the edge, and in the cloud," he says.

"Closing a major funding round during these times of economic uncertainty is testament to the promise that our investors see in Cohesity," Aron says.

"More enterprises globally are abandoning legacy offerings in favour of our modern, software-defined approach to data management that is incredibly simple to use -- critical during these challenging times as customers are looking to reduce total cost of ownership while enabling remote IT teams," he explains.

Cohesity will leverage the new investment to advance research and development -- building new capabilities to serve some of the largest enterprises in the world. The company will also continue to broaden its reach and awareness both domestically and internationally, while extending its relationships with alliances and partners.

Since the company's last funding round, Cohesity has completed its transition to a software business model. In comparing the first half of FY 2019 (August-January) to the first half of FY 2020, Cohesity has hit the following milestones:

• 150% increase in recurring revenue, emphasising the success of the companys subscription-based software model.
• 100% increase in customers as well as data under management.
• 135% increase in the number of Cohesitys new and existing customers that have licensed the companys cloud capabilities.
• "We are excited to partner with Cohesity because they are attacking a huge market and are simply the best at what they do. They are reinventing data management with extraordinary solutions and a vision for the future that is unlike any other company in the market today," says Randy Glein, co-founder and partner, DFJ Growth. 

"Cohesity has successfully transitioned to a software business model, secured outstanding partners globally, built deep OEM relationships with top technology companies, and is managing data for some of the largest enterprises in the world. We are excited to be a part of Cohesitys journey and look forward to helping the company, and its world-class team, scale into the category-defining company built to last."

Phil Goodwin, research director at analyst firm IDC, says Cohesity's latest funding round was a testament to its business strategy and the value its software-defined data management platform provides to customers and partners.

"Cohesity's web-scale platform has a unique architecture to help organisations consolidate and manage their data from a single point of view while supporting powerful apps that make data more useful and productive," he says.

Ashu Garg, general partner, Foundation Capital, adds, "Foundation Capital is excited to continue investing in Cohesity -- a company that is transforming data management.

"Data is the most valuable digital asset for enterprises today, yet many organisations struggle to manage, protect, and derive value from it," he says.

"Cohesity's cutting-edge software makes it easy for customers to solve these challenges in a hybrid cloud world. We believe that's why the company is seeing such rapid adoption and will continue to win favour with enterprises globally."