US-based data management software provider Cloudian closed a $94m series E round yesterday backed by courier service Japan Post, telecoms firm NTT Docomo and law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati.
Eight Roads Ventures, a venture capital arm of financial services group Fidelity, public-private partnership Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), investment bank Goldman Sachs and investment firm Digital Alpha also backed the round.
Japan Post, NTT Docomo and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati participated through respective corporate venturing divisions JPIC, NTT Docomo Ventures and WS Investments. The $94m total includes $25m supplied by Digital Alpha in February this year.
Founded in 2011, Cloudian has developed cloud-based distributed file platform that enables enterprise customers to store and manage their data. The series E funding will drive global sales and marketing activities and go towards the recruitment of additional engineers.
Cloudian has raised $173m in equity funding to date. It also obtained $100m in debt financing in February from Digital Alpha, at the same time the investment firm injected $25m in equity.
Intel Capital, the corporate venturing arm of semiconductor producer Intel, backed a $5.1m round in 2013, before returning for a $24m series C round the following year also backed by Eight Roads and INCJ.
The same three backers then returned for a $41m round in 2016, investing alongside consumer electronics manufacturer Lenovo, financial services firm City National Bank, Goldman Sachs, Epsilon Venture Partners and DVP Investment.
Takayuki Inagawa, president and chief executive of NTT Docomo Ventures, said: “Computing now operates without physical boundaries, and customers need storage solutions that also span from the data center to the edge.
“Cloudian’s geo-distributed architecture creates a global fabric of storage assets that supports the next generation of connected devices.”