Cohesity, a cloud backup and data management technology company backed by SoftBank, is now valued at $3.7 billion and it marching toward a potential IPO (initial public offering), according to Bloomberg. Cohesity's valuation has grown from $2.5 billion in 2020, the report said.
Cohesity raised $250 million in Series E funding in April 2020, and the unified data management software provider has raised $650 million since inception. The Series E funding surfaced after Cohesity's recurring revenue grew more than 150 percent in the first half of fiscal year 2020. At the time, the company did not announce actual revenue dollar figures.
Cohesity's go-to-market sales strategy is "100 percent partner-focused," and the effort leverages solution providers, global system integrators (GSI), service providers, and distributors.
Cohesity Nears Cash-Flow Break-Even; Explores Potential IPO?
Fast forward to present day. The company has more than two years of cash on its balance sheet, and is nearing cash-flow break-even, the Bloomberg report says. Moreover, a Cohesity IPO is "not far off," CEO Mohit Aron said in the report. Aron previously founded Nutanix, the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) technology funding.
Cohesity was founded in 2013 and emerged from stealth mode around 2015. Early efforts included hardware appliances, but the company has since emphasized software as its primary focus. In recent years, the company has been a fast-growing provider of cloud-centric data protection, backup and disaster recovery (BDR), ransomware recovery, and other software services that protect hybrid IT systems.
Key Cohesity rivals include Druva, Rubrik and Veeam, among many others. If Cohesity extends down-market into the SMB sector, additional rivals could involve MSP- and channel-friendly software and data protection companies like Acronis, Arcserve-StorageCraft, Axcient, OpenText’s Carbonite, and Datto, among many others.
New rivals also are emerging. For instance, HYCU, an enterprise software company specializing in multi-cloud data backup and recovery as a service, has raised $87.5 million in Series A financing led by Bain Capital Ventures, the companies disclosed in March 2021.
Cohesity Business Challenges
Meanwhile, Cohesity has also hit some occasional turbulence -- including some targeted layoffs in mid-2020. Moreover, Cohesity has had to battle a cloud data protection lawsuit filed by rival Commvault.
Those challenges aside, Cohesity seems to be signaling continued growth -- and a march toward a potential IPO.
