Graphiant, a channel-friendly edge networking startup, said on Tuesday that it has secured a $62M Series B fundraising round. The round brings the company’s total funding to $96M.
The funds will be utilised to support continuing growth as Graphiant’s next-generation architecture finds traction.
The current investment announcement follows the debut of Graphiant’s new channel programme, G-Force, earlier this month. The program’s target audience includes VARs, agents, and telecom service provider partners.
“The reaction to Graphiant’s network edge has been swift and enthusiastic,” said Khalid Raza, founder of Graphiant. “It has been much faster than what we saw with MPLS at Cisco or SD-WAN with Viptela. Graphiant has hit a nerve.”
Taking on Cisco
Raza, the former Viptela co-founder and CTO known as the “Father” of SD-WAN, founded Graphiant with the intention of taking on Cisco and other formidable SD-WAN providers as increasingly distributed workloads and network complexity generate greater complexity and security challenges for enterprises.
Graphiant, situated in San Jose, California, provides MPLS-level connectivity between the enterprise WAN, hybrid cloud, network edge, clients, and partners. The solution is made available as a service via the Graphiant Network Edge. The combination of as-a-Service delivery with a high-performance private network allows the company to provide SLA-class performance at up to 70% less expense, according to the company.
“The value proposition Graphiant provides to large enterprises is clearer and more dramatic than any other solution out there, so the early and strong adoption of Graphiant by that market has not been a surprise,” said Mike Goguen, Founder and Managing Partner at Two Bear Capital. “But seeing large service providers also enthusiastically partner with Graphiant has been unexpected and significantly boosts the company’s potential for massive and positive impact on the global WAN market as a whole.”
“It’s not often a company can fundamentally change an industry,” says Bill Coughran, partner at Sequoia Capital. “Graphiant has a chance to do precisely that. That’s why Sequoia has continued to invest in them.”
“Graphiant’s promise with Network Edge is one of the most exciting technology trends in decades and represents a complete architectural shift in networking,” said Brian Long, co-founder and managing partner of Atlantic Bridge. “We knew this was a stand-out founder with a big idea that will revolutionize this industry.”
Graphiant caters to three critical use cases. To begin, companies can use Graphiant to connect enterprise resources. Second, they have the ability to connect to various public clouds. Finally, firms can link with other businesses, such as partners or customers.
