Pax8, an international transactional cloud marketplace, has secured $185 million in additional equity funding from new investor SoftBank Vision Fund 2, bringing its valuation to $1.7 billion. SoftBank Vision Fund led the round, with previous investors Catalyst Investors, Sageview Capital, Blue Cloud Ventures, and Liberty Global Ventures also contributing.
With its 20,000 managed services partners, marketplace, education, support, and solutions, Pax8 has cloud-enabled over 200,000 organizations. Through this IT channel ecosystem, the firm provides companies a unique approach and streamlines the IT buying process for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMBs). Pax8 handles billing and provisioning problems while also providing the automation that organizations need to create scale.
“As we continue to evolve our technology and marketplace to meet the needs of SMBs, the new investment will provide capital to accelerate innovation and continued expansion into new global markets,” said John Street, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Pax8. “This strong funding round reflects the powerful work Pax8 is doing to enable and grow SMBs through our partners, employees, technology, education, and support. Year over year, we continue to experience record-breaking growth, and we look forward to working with SoftBank to continue elevating our performance.”
SoftBank
“Pax8 has disrupted the IT industry, exemplified courage through innovation, and has built the people, processes, and technology to revolutionize the way businesses build and consume technology,” said Nagraj Kashyap, Managing Partner at SoftBank. “Under John’s leadership Pax8 has shown ongoing success and we believe its vision for the future will prove to be transformative for B2B markets.”
Kristin Bannon, Investment Director of SoftBank Investment Advisers, will join the Pax8 Board of Directors as part of the deal.
“Through its marketplace, Pax8 is empowering SMBs with technology solutions they would otherwise not have access to while simultaneously granting software vendors distribution capabilities to a hard-to-reach customer segment,” said Kristin Bannon. “I am thrilled to join the Pax8 Board and partner with the company on its hyper-growth technology strategy for the platform and cloud marketplace, and new opportunities for the company and its ecosystem of partners.”
