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TCV invests $89m into networking services vendor Cradlepoint

The venture firm that has GoDaddy, Netflix, Spotify, and Splunk in its portfolio has made a large investment in Idaho-based networking services company Cradlepoint.
Written by Tas Bindi, Contributor

Cradlepoint has raised $89 million in Series C funding from Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV). This brings the total amount raised by the cloud networking services company to more than $157 million.

As part of the deal, TCV's general partner Ted Coons and venture partner Doug Gilstrap will join Cradlepoint's board.

The 10-year-old Boise, Idaho-based company, which sells routers and services for managed networks, said it will use the funding to support ongoing growth as well as product and service enhancements. It plans to expand its 4G LTE coverage, while preparing for a 5G future.

Cradlepoint chief executive George Mulhern said software-defined networking (SDN), mobile networking, and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies will play "a pivotal role in the new connected enterprise" and that the company is well-poised to capitalise on this opportunity.

"This dramatic shift in the volume and variety of connections will force the enterprise WAN to become more cloud-orchestrated, software-defined, and wirelessly connected and has already started to usher in an entirely new network security model," said Eric Hanselman, chief analyst at 451 Research.

Cradlepoint claims its 4G LTE routers serve 15,000 customers across the board from education, government, and healthcare to financial services, retail, and transportation.

The company operates on a subscription-based network-as-a-service model where customers pay for the company's cloud-based network management services in one, three, or five-year increments, in addition to paying one-off fees for the routers. The company claims to have deployed 1.5 million units worldwide to date.

Cradlepoint competes with networking giant Cisco as well as software-defined wide area network players such as VeloCloud, which raised $35 million in Series D funding from investors including Cisco and Telstra earlier this month.

Headquartered in Idaho, Cradlepoint has development centres in Silicon Valley and Kelowna, Canada, with offices in the UK, Australia, and Japan.

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