Distributed cloud networking and SDN automation provider, Pluribus Networks, has announced a new funding round of $20 million led by investment funds managed by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital. The financing would be used to bolster R&D for multiple new product initiatives along with sales and marketing resources.
Pluribus says it is experiencing strong market traction delivering automated data center networking solutions to both enterprise and service providers across all regions and verticals. Its product portfolio of high-performance Freedom 9000 series data center switches, combined with the Netvisor ONE OS and the Adaptive Cloud Fabric controllerless SDN automation software, would deliver a highly automated and cost-effective network fabric aimed at increasing agility and simplifying network operations across distributed data center locations.
Pluribus Networks’ software is also available on a variety of high-performance hardware platforms, including Dell EMC PowerSwitch and Edgecore Networks Open Cloud white box data center switches.
“In recent months, we have raised our data center switching forecast to reflect increased market opportunities and accelerated pace of digital transformation,” said Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Research Director, Dell’Oro Group. “We now forecast the market to surpass $20 billion by 2025. We have also raised our forecast on disaggregated network operating system software and expect the next wave of adoption to be driven by a broad set of customers including Tier 1 cloud service providers, Tier 2/3 cloud service providers, Telcos and large enterprises. Given this healthy outlook, it is no surprise to see increased investment in companies that are addressing this market, including Pluribus Networks.”
Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital
Prior to this new financing round, Pluribus Networks had previously raised $125 million in funding. The company is intending to continue to innovate and grow share in the data center networking market.
“With such pronounced momentum of cloud infrastructure towards distributed data center architectures, Pluribus is uniquely positioned to address a number of multi-site data centers, edge computing and metro use cases by providing networks that are highly distributed and perform at scale,” said Kumar Srikantan, Pluribus Networks, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). “The recent thorough due diligence and investment from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, along with the strong support of our existing investors, is an affirmation of our technology, vision and market position.”
Morgan Stanley adds to Pluribus’ existing portfolio of top-tier investors, including Ericsson, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Temasek, Menlo Ventures, Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures, Data Collective Venture Capital and Mohr Davidow.
“Our organization has studied the cloud networking landscape, and we believe Pluribus is well-positioned to compete and benefit from the market’s adoption of 5G, edge and distributed computing,” said Pete Chung, head of Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital. “Pluribus’ innovative approach to data center automation is driving better performance, lowering costs and significantly simplifying operations for both enterprises and service providers.”
