Veeam, which helps users protect and recover their data, has seen its valuation soar in a recent secondary sale aimed at bolstering the company's cap table ahead of its eventual IPO.
The Insight Partners-backed company said Tuesday it raised $2 billion in a secondary sale of stock worth $15 billion. TPG led the investment, with participation from Temasek, Neuberger Berman Capital Solutions and others. The sale is expected to close in the first quarter of 2025.
The sale triples Veeam's price since it was acquired by Insight Partners for $5 billion in January 2020. According to its financial results at the end of September, the company posted annual recurring revenue of $1.7 billion, an 18% year-over-year growth.
Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran (pictured above) told TechCrunch that while the company doesn't need to raise capital, the time was right to provide some liquidity to early investors and employees. spoke. Eswaran also said the company hopes to bring in strategic investors for an eventual IPO, but added that the company has no plans to exit yet.
“It was important to bring in select, high-quality investors,” Eswaran said. “As we look to the next stage of the journey, some milestones such as an IPO, it is important to have a diverse group of top investors for those milestones.”
Veeam appears to have achieved some of its goals, given that all currently participating investors invest in both private and public assets. Unlike many private equity and venture capital firms, they are unlikely to sell Veeam shares in an IPO. funds.
Eswaran said the new $2 billion will be used to expand the company's research and development team and make acquisitions when the right opportunity arises.
Although the company has not set specific M&A goals, it is always on the lookout for potential acquisition targets. Eswaran talked about several areas, including companies with AI technology that can help Veeam scale up, data recovery businesses focused on workloads where Veeam is currently inactive, and companies with adjacent or complementary technologies. Mentioned.
When Veeam was founded 18 years ago, there wasn't much competition in the data resilience space, but the company now operates in a relatively crowded market, especially with the rise of both cloud and AI.
There are many other companies looking to help businesses manage their data and keep it secure. As an example, Rubrik entered the public market earlier this year at a valuation of $5.6 billion. We also have late-stage startups like Cohesity (which has raised nearly $1 billion). venture capital) and Druva (raised over $475 million).
“Competition is actually a good thing,” Eswaran said. “This will enable the industry and all of us to innovate faster.”
Based in Seattle, Washington, Veeam was founded in 2006 and has always focused on data resiliency and recovery. Its technology covers 150 different workloads from SaaS to AI, and its customers include large enterprises such as Shell and Deloitte, as well as the federal government and local governments such as the City of New Orleans.
“We feel like we are the best platform at the moment, as evidenced by our number one market share,” Eswaran said. “If anything, this round of overrecruitment just validated our direction.”