INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Nginx, the commercial company behind the open source web server, announced a $43 million Series C investment today led by Goldman Sachs
Growth Equity.NEA, which has been on board as an early investor is also participating
As part of the deal, David Campbell, managing director at Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division will join the Nginx board
Today’s investment brings the total raised to $103 million, according to the company.The company was not willing to discuss valuation for
this round.Nginx’s open source approach is already well established running 400 million websites including some of the biggest in the
Meanwhile, the commercial side of the business has 1,500 paying customers, giving those customers not just support, but additional
functionality such as load balancing, an API gateway and analytics.Nginx CEO Gus Robertson was pleased to get the backing of such
“NEA is one of the largest venture capitalists in Silicon Valley and Goldman Sachs is one of the largest investment banks in the world
And so to have both of those parceled together to lead this round is a great testament to the company and the technology and the team,” he
said.The company already has plans to expand its core commercial product, Nginx Plus in the coming weeks
“We need to continue to innovate and build products that help our customers alleviate the complexity of delivery of distributed or micro
service based applications
So you’ll see us release a new product in the coming weeks called Controller
Controller is the control plane on top of Nginx Plus,” Robertson explained
(Controller was launched in Beta last fall.)But with $43 million in the bank, they want to look to build out Nginx Plus even more in the
They will also be opening new offices globally to add to its international presence, while expanding its partners ecosystem
All of this means an ambitious goal to increase the current staff of 220 to 300 by the end of the year.The open source product was
originally created by Igor Sysoev back in 2002
He introduced the commercial company on top of the open source project in 2011
Robertson came on board as CEO a year later
The company has been growing 100 percent year over year since 2013 and expects to continue that trajectory through 2019.
