Data firm Actifio joins US$1b valuation club

SAN FRANCISCO — Social-networking companies, online game developers and other consumer-focused tech start-ups have attracted huge investor attention, as well as lofty valuations to boot.

Today, a young start-up, Actifio, is drawing similar investor interest in a decidedly unflashy sector: Data storage. Boston-based Actifio yesterday announced that it has raised US$100 million (S$127 million) in funding led by Tiger Global, valuing the company at US$1 billion. This vote of confidence has placed Actifio in an elite club of start-ups with 10-figure valuations, stepping up pressure on the company to deliver on its ambitions.

Though little-known outside technology circles, Actifio is rapidly gaining large corporate customers as it attacks a problem that incumbent data storage firms have been slow to address. Its software, which costs an average of US$349,000 for a three-year contract, gives a company access to a virtual version of backup copies of data, freeing up space and improving the overall efficiency of the company’s data storage.

“An idea like this comes along about once a decade,” said Mr Jamie Goldstein, a partner at North Bridge, a venture capital firm that was an initial investor in Actifio and participated in the latest financing round. “Data has become such an important part of the tech economy and the entire economy. Anybody who is collecting a lot of data is going to be facing this problem.”

Actifio, which was founded in 2009, hopes to go public next year and its investors are betting on a big payday. But for now, backing the company amounts to a bet on the continued explosion of data. “We thought the growth of data was going to be a problem and a hindrance,” said Mr Peter Levine, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, which started backing Actifio in 2011. “These guys solved that problem.”

Andreessen and existing investors North Bridge, Greylock, Advanced Technology Ventures and Technology Crossover Ventures joined the current round of funding.

Actifio is not profitable, but said its bookings grew 182 per cent last year and it now has more than 300 customers around the world. These include companies such as Time Warner Cable, Netflix, IBM and Unilever. AGENCIES