AppDynamics Raises $158M; Now Valued At $1.9 Billion

Last month, based on an SEC filing, we told you that seven-year-old, San Francisco-based AppDynamics had raised a fresh $83.4 million in funding as part of a round that was targeting up to $150 million.

Turns out the company met that target and then some. CEO David Wadhwani — who joined the firm in September after spending more than a decade as an executive at Adobe, including as its digital chief — says the company has just closed on $158 million in a round led by General Atlantic and Altimeter Capital.

Other participants in the round include Adage Capital, Industry Ventures, Goldman Sachs, and Cross Creek Advisors, as well as earlier backers Institutional Venture Partners, Greylock Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

AppDynamics makes software to monitor the performance of business applications, competing with some traditional firms like IBM, as well as younger outfits like New Relic, which went public last December and has seen relatively steady stock performance since. (New Relic, which raised $214 million in venture funding, has a current market cap of $1.8 billion.)

AppDynamics had previously raised roughly $206 million in debt and equity, including a $120 million round — $70 million equity and $50 million of debt — that closed in July of last year.

At the time of the funding announcement, the company told VentureBeat that the money represented “pre-IPO growth financing.” Asked today what this new round means, Wadhwani said he “won’t speculate on the exact timing” of an IPO but added, “I was brought in to take this company public, and that’s what I intend to do.”

The new funding, he said, “represents freedom. We can [execute on our plans for the company] on this money and effectively choose when we want to go public.”

Wadhwani declined to discuss the company’s post-money valuation, but a source close to the company pegs it at $1.9 billion.

Wadhwani also declined to discuss exactly how many customers AppDynamics has amassed, saying only, “It’s clear to me that AppDynamics has no cap in terms of growth right now.”

In late September, the company — which employs 850 people across a dozen offices globally — publicly stated that it had 1,600 customers, many of them Fortune 1000 companies.

AppDynamics founder Jyoti Bansal stepped down from the CEO post in September. He is now the company’s executive chairman and chief strategist.