Rancher Labs, a US-based software container platform developer, completed a $40m series D round on Monday that was led by Telstra Ventures, telecommunications firm Telstra’s corporate venturing arm.
F&G Ventures, GRC SinoGreen, Mayfield Fund and Nexus Venture Partners also participated in the round, which took the company’s total funding to $95m.
Founded in 2014, Rancher provides software that allows Kubernetes, an open-source container-orchestration system for software management, to be deployed in the automation of applications across data centres, the cloud and onsite.
The series D funding will go toward product innovation and marketing. Rancher already counts Telstra as a customer, having provided services for its contact centre, customer relationship management and network provisioning activities.
Steve Schmidt, an investment partner overseeing enterprise deals for Telstra Ventures, said: “As an investor, you are always on the lookout for world-class entrepreneurs with the talent to build and scale great products in big markets.
“Our mission is ‘partnering with the extraordinary’ and after spending time with [Rancher chief executive Sheng Liang], it was clear Rancher is building something special.”
Rancher received $25m in series C funding from F&G Ventures, GRC SinoGreen and Nexus Venture Partners in July 2019, the latter two having previously joined Mayfield in its $20m series B round in 2016.
Mayfield and Nexus Venture Partners had already provided $10m in series A funding for the company the year before.
