There is a growing demand for stronger security at every point in the IT ecosystem, and today, one of the the more successful enterprise startups to emerge in the last several years is announcing a big round of funding to provide that.<\/p>\n
Rubrik<\/a>, which provides enterprise data management and backup services across on-premise, cloud and hybrid networks, has raised $261 million in funding at a $3.3 billion valuation from\u00a0Bain Capital Ventures and previous investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures and IVP. It intends to use the funding to build (and buy) tech to expand deeper into security and compliance services alongside its existing data management products.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we have demonstrated leadership in data recovery, our customers have been demanding new products and services from us,\u201d CEO and co-founder Bipul Sinha said in an interview, \u201cso we\u2019ve raised capital to double down on that.\u201d<\/p>\n This Series E brings the total raised by Rubrik to $553 million, and it is a big leap for the company: its last raise of $180 million, in 2017, valued Rubrik at $1.3 billion.<\/p>\n Rubrik is not disclosing any other specific financial numbers with the news \u2014 Sinha\u2019s response to the question was that he thinks the valuation jump speaks for itself. He also confirmed the company is not profitable, but intentionally so.<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal is to build a long-term, iconic company, and so we want to become profitable but not at the cost of growth,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are leading this market transformation while it continues to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n That market transformation is to provide services \u2014 and up to now, specifically data back-up services \u2014 for enterprises that operate their networks across a hybrid environment, with data used and stored on premises, in the cloud, and sometimes in multiple clouds.<\/p>\n There are a number of other companies that compete with it in backup including biggies like\u00a0Druva, CommVault and EMC, but Rubrik was an early mover in identifying a need to backup and provide data recovery across a mix of locations.<\/p>\n Moving into security and compliance is a natural progression for the company.<\/p>\n There has always been a synergy between Rubrik\u2019s core business and security\/compliance. Often the need for backup and recovery arises specifically as a result of security breaches or other glitches that result from people accessing data when they are not supposed to, and that issue gets compounded when you have data stored and used across multiple locations.<\/p>\n \u201cThe\u00a0fragmentation across cloud and on-prem services creates issues around security and data management,\u201d Sinha said. \u201cThe more fragmentation you have, the more important Rubrik [or other data management services] get.\u201d<\/p>\n Similarly, moving into security and compliance together goes hand-in-hand because both address similar needs at companies to be handling information responsibly. \u201cSecurity and compliance are joined at the hip from a regulatory perspective,\u201d Sinha said.<\/p>\n Up to now, Rubrik has mostly built its service from the ground up. One notable exception has been that it made an acquisition \u2014 its first \u2014 last year when it acquired NoSQL data backup specialist Datos IO<\/a>, which helped Rubrik further expand from appliance-based management to cloud-based.<\/p>\n In the case of adding on more security and compliance offerings, it\u2019s not clear yet whether that will be built organically or via acquisition (and there are indeed a number of security startups out there that could be candidates if it\u2019s the latter).<\/p>\n \u201cRubrik is fundamentally an innovation driven company,\u201d Sinha said. \u201cWe like coherent and consistent architecture. Having said that, as a responsible and ambitious company, we are always looking at the marketplace, at where there are the teams that we can acquire.\u201d<\/p>\n