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Tigera, an enterprise software company providing security and compliance solutions for Kubernetes platforms, closed a Series B funding round of $30 million led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Madrona, NEA, and Wing. According to the company, Tigera software has been OEMed by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud to run their managed Kubernetes services, as well as commercial Kubernetes distributions including Docker, Red Hat Open Shift, and Canonical. Their blend of cloud and on-premises solutions are designed to enable interoperability of security policies between multiple clouds and on-premises environments which prevent cloud lock-in for enterprises. Tigera plans to use the new funding to accelerate growth of its Kubernetes security and compliance solutions.
Artificial intelligence company Forge.AI closed a $11M Series A funding round led by Underscore VC with participation from Accomplice, Boston Seed Capital, Imagination Capital, and Project 11 Ventures. According to the company, Forge.AI is focused on helping businesses harness the information content contained in 80 percent of the world's data that is unstructured. Using both natural language understanding technologies and a proprietary dynamic self-learning knowledge graph, Forge.AI transforms publicly available text-heavy content—such as news reports, social media, financial reports, and SEC filings—into knowledge-rich, structured event feeds. Data science and engineering teams then apply these event feeds directly into their companies’ analytical decision-making processes and infrastructures.
Procore Technologies, Inc., a provider of cloud-based applications for construction, secured $75 million in a funding round led by Tiger Global Management. Procore currently has 1,300 full-time employees working across 12 offices around the globe, with 5,000 customers on projects in over 100 countries. The company was recently recognized as the fourth best place to work in the United States, according to Glassdoor's 2019 Best Places to Work. The company plans to use this round, which values the company at $3 billion, to support product development, partner platform expansion, and continued investment in human resources.
Weave, a customer experience management (CXM) platform, completed a $37.5 million Series C funding round led by growth equity firm Lead Edge Capital, with participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Catalyst Investors, Crosslink Capital, and Pelion Venture Partners. This investment will be used to accelerate current growth, which according to the company amounted to 100 percent in 2018. With the new funding, Weave plans to accelerate its small and medium-sized business marketplace growth and double its workforce. In addition, the company plans to double down on existing markets (dental, optometry and medical) while expanding into new markets.
Amplitude raised $80 million in Series D funding led by Sequoia Capital. Lead Edge joined the round as a major investor, and existing investors Benchmark Capital, IVP and Battery Ventures also participated. Sequoia partner Pat Grady has also joined Amplitude's board of directors. Amplitude's product intelligence platform is designed to enable companies to use insights from customer behavior data in digital properties to drive growth in such business outcomes as revenue. Product and growth teams use Amplitude to understand their user experience, ship impactful features and campaigns, and run their digital product portfolios. Amplitude now serves 26,000 customers, including Microsoft, Under Armour, Intuit, Twitter, Bonobos, and Peloton. The company plans to use the funding to further scale its operations globally.
RingCentral, Inc., a provider of global enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solutions, announced Peter Hughes as regional sales vice president for Asia Pacific. Hughes will be based at RingCentral’s regional headquarters in Sydney, Australia. Prior to joining RingCentral, Hughes led a global team at Cisco for 16 years that was responsible for establishing new routes and channels to market for Cisco’s cloud collaboration solution. During that time, he expanded his role from director of sales for Australia and New Zealand to director of sales for Asia Pacific and, ultimately, to director of Global Sales. Prior to Cisco, he served for seven years as national sales manager, Australia for the Siemens Hicom communications platform.
Machine identity protection provider Venafi® secured a $100 million round of financing led by TCV, with additional participation from existing investors QuestMark Partners and NextEquity Partners. TVC has also backed Airbnb, Alarm.com, Cradlepoint, Genesys, Netflix, Rapid7, Silver Peak, Splunk, Spotify, and Zillow. As part of the transaction, TCV General Partner Jake Reynolds will join Venafi’s board of directors. In addition to fueling growth, the company plans to make $12.5 million of the investment available to third-party developers in the first tranche of the new Machine Identity Protection Development Fund. Venafi created the fund to sponsor the integration of machine identity intelligence into a wide range of machines and further enhance and expand the machine identity ecosystem. The fund is designed to allow developers—including consultancies, systems integrators, startups, open source developers, and cybersecurity vendors—to build integrations that deliver greater visibility, intelligence, and automation for Venafi customers.
Leading work management platform Asana completed a $50 million Series E equity round at a valuation of $1.5 billion. The round was led by Generation Investment Management, in addition to existing investors 8VC, Benchmark Capital, and Founders Fund, and new investors Lead Edge Capital and World Innovation Lab. The most recent funding brings Asana’s total funds raised in 2018 to $125 million. The funding follows the launch of Asana Business, which introduced a new suite of features for project managers, portfolio leads, and management. Named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Collaborative Work Management Tools for The Enterprise Q4 2018 report, the company is also widely known for its purpose-driven approach to culture and was named a 2018 Top 5 “Best Place to Work” by Fortune magazine.
Intelligent integration and automation platform Workato completed a $25 million in Series B funding round that included Battery Ventures, Storm Ventures, ServiceNow, and Workday Ventures. According to the company, it grew 300% in 2017, and its product is used by 3,500 customers across 57 countries. Workato was also named a leader in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) and by Forrester in the Forrester Wave for Dynamic iPaaS.
Deputy, a workforce management software platform, closed an $81 million Series B funding round in Australia’s largest Series B secured to date. Deputy strives to give employees and employers simple-to-use software to help with time management, scheduling, and other critical workplace operations. According to the company, it supports one million users including Amazon, Uber, HubSpot, and Compass. To date, Deputy has scheduled 200 million shifts—equating to over 1.2 billion hours of work—and facilitated $30 billion in payroll payments.