Nexenta Raises $21 Million in Series C, Total at $27.5 Million

Nexenta Systems has secured more than $21 million in Series C financing, with Menlo Ventures as its new lead investor.

Sierra Ventures and Razor’s Edge Ventures also participated in this round.

They join current investors Javelin Venture Partners and TransLink Capital.

The infusion of funding follows three years of growth exceeding 400% year-over-year. In the past year, Nexenta reached a number of significant milestones, including driving $300 million in hardware sales through the channel, serving more than 4,000 customers and tripling its workforce while staying very efficient and funding most operations from sales proceeds. This round of funding will be used to sustain the company’s growth, pace of innovation and global expansion to meet the demand for the company’s solutions.

"We had choices when we decided to raise a growth round, and are delighted to be working with Pravin Vazirani from Menlo Ventures. Menlo has had a strong track record of successful investments in the storage space including investments in 3Par, Spinnaker Networks, Pliant and Carbonite and brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. We are also excited that Tim Guleri from Sierra Ventures will be working with us, as his experience will add value to the board as well," said Nexenta CEO Evan Powell.
 
"Legacy storage companies, with their reliance on customer lock-in and out of date technical foundations, are not able to address today’s exponential growth in storage demand," he added. "Most new storage start-ups simply perpetuate the same old ‘lock ’em in’ business model, with a snazzier name plate on the array and unproven software under the hood. This investment will enable us to make enterprise class storage for everyone a reality for tens of thousands more partners and end users around the world. We had choices when we decided to raise a growth round and I couldn’t be happier to be partnering with Menlo Ventures and Sierra Ventures as we seek to open up one of the last bastions of antediluvian lock-in based business models in enterprise IT."