Axcient Raises $20M To Help Companies Backup And Protect Data

Leena Rao

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Friday, January 18th, 2013
axcient

Axcient, the hybrid cloud-based data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity startup, has raised $20 million in Series D funding led by Scale Venture Partners and Thomvest Ventures with Peninsula Ventures and Allegis Capital participating. This brings the company’s total funding to $53.5 million.

Founded in 2006, Axcient wants to bring core data protection and recovery solutions to SMBs and large corporations for a reasonable price. Using Axcient, companies can combine storage, backup and disaster-recovery into a single solution. To do so, Axcient sends businesses a small device (typically about the size of a desktop hard drive), which they can set up in as little as 5 minutes and self-connects to Axcient’s cloud as well as the company’s network.

With local, on-site hardware that use local network speeds with the added benefit of the creation of a secure tunnel to Axcient’s cloud, the startup has basically enabled organizations to take advantage of a SaaS-based hybrid cloud model which works for companies with 250GB of data or up to hundreds of terabytes. And the cost to the end-user scales from $100 a month to tens of thousands of dollars per month for enterprises with larger data needs.

The company says the key differentiator for its service is its platform approach, which eliminates a multitude of antiquated technologies such as backup, business continuity, archiving and disaster recovery in favor of a single, unified platform that eliminates downtime and data loss

And thanks to this approach, Axcient is growing fast. The company’s sales were up 100% in 2012, and Axcient protects close to 10 billion files and apps across thousands of organizations. Axcient’s client list includes the Make-a-Wish Foundation, Budget Rent a Car, Union Bank and Cellular One

The new funding is going to be used to hire 50+ people in engineering, sales and marketing in 2013.

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