US-based IT server software developer Nginx has raised $8m in a series B extension led by telecommunications company Telstra’s corporate venturing arm Telstra Ventures, increasing the round to $38m.
Venture capital firms New Enterprise Associates (NEA), eVentures, Runa Capital and Index Ventures also participated in the extension, which represented the round’s third tranche.
NEA led the $10m first tranche in 2013, which also featured eVentures, Runa, MSD Capital and angel investor Aaron Levie. It also led the $20m second close the following year, investing togther with Runa, eVentures, Index and Gus Robertson, chief executive of Nginx.
Nginx raised $3m in a 2011 series A round featuring BV Capital, the VC firm backed by retailer Otto Group, as well as Runa and MSD.
Founded in 2002, Nginx develops open-source software used to operate web servers. The technology powers a range of resource-heavy websites such as photo sharing platform Instagram, online storage provider Box and video streaming service Netflix.
Nginx will use the latest capital injection to expand further, building on a 300% growth in revenue last year. It hopes to tap into Telstra’s customer base to increase the number of its clients from hundreds to tens of thousands.
Mark Sherman, managing director of Telstra Ventures, said: “When you look under the hood of many of the most popular websites around the world today you find Nginx’s technology. This business continues to grow their share of the application delivery market.
“Nginx consistently delivers improved capabilities and performance for content heavy sites, and sites experiencing high traffic volumes. We are looking forward to working closely with Nginx to improve our customer experience and help our enterprise customers embrace more software-defined application services.”