Classify this as a rumor for now, but Israeli business press is reporting that Akamai is poised to take over one of its competitors, website and mobile acceleration technology vendor Cotendo, for $300 million to $350 million. Founded in 2008, Cotendo has raised over $36 million in funding from investors like Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital and Tenaya Capital.
A few months ago, Cotendo raised $17 million in new funding from its previous backers, with Citrix Systems and Juniper Networks stepping in as strategic investors as well. Other strategic partners include Google, AT&T and Sumitomo Corporation.
The company specializes in acceleration services for dynamic Web apps, static and dynamic web content, performance monitoring and automatic failover as well as real-time reporting and analytics. Obviously, Akamai also provides such services to its clients, but is much bigger than Cotendo.
On an interesting sidenote: a year ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology joined Akamai in suing Cotendo over patent infringement.
Cotendo is headquartered in Silicon Valley with R&D facilities near Netanya, in Israel. Its three co-founders are Commtouch Software veterans.
According to Globes, Cotendo customers include Zynga, Vistaprint and Facebook. The company’s advisory board includes Jonathan Heiliger, currently VP of Technical Operations at Facebook.