INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Pensando, an edge computing startup founded by former Cisco engineers, came out of stealth mode today with an announcement that it has
raised a $145 million Series C
The company’s software and hardware technology, created to give data centers more of the flexibility of cloud computing servers, is being
positioned as a competitor to Amazon Web Services Nitro.The round was led by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Lightspeed Venture Partners and
brings Pensando’s total raised so far to $278 million
HPE chief technology officer Mark Potter and Lightspeed Venture partner Barry Eggers will join Pensando’s board of directors
The company’s chairman is former Cisco CEO John Chambers, who is also one of Pensando’s investors through JC2 Ventures.Pensando was
founded in 2017 by Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero and Soni Jiandani, a team of engineers who spearheaded the development of several
of Cisco’s key technologies, and founded four startups that were acquired by Cisco, including Insieme Networks
(In an interview with Reuters, Pensando chief financial officer Randy Pond, a former Cisco executive vice president, said it isn’t clear
if Cisco is interested in acquiring the startup, adding “our aspirations at this point would be to IPO
But, you know, there’s always other possibilities for monetization events.”)The startup claims its edge computing platform performs five
to nine times better than AWS Nitro, in terms of productivity and scale
Pensando prepares data center infrastructure for edge computing, better equipping them to handle data from 5G, artificial intelligence and
Internet of Things applications
While in stealth mode, Pensando acquired customers including HPE, Goldman Sachs, NetApp and Equinix.In a press statement, Potter said
“Today’s rapidly transforming, hyper-connected world requires enterprises to operate with even greater flexibility and choices than ever
HPE’s expanding relationship with Pensando Systems stems from our shared understanding of enterprises and the cloud
We are proud to announce our investment and solution partnership with Pensando and will continue to drive solutions that anticipate our
customers’ needs together.”
