Ra’anana-based start-up DriveNets raises $110m. in funding

The company aims to solve one of the greatest threats facing the telecommunications industry today.

FEBRUARY 15, 2019 03:54

Updated: FEBRUARY 18, 2019 05:18

Employees of Ra'anana-based start-up DriveNets (photo credit: DRIVENETS) — Employees of Ra'anana-based start-up DriveNets

(photo credit: DRIVENETS)

Ra’anana-based networking software start-up DriveNets has raised $110 million in Series A funding to accelerate worldwide growth, the company announced on Sunday.

The round was led by Herzliya-headquartered Pitango Growth and California-based Bessemer Venture Partners, with the participation of a number of private investors. Founded in 2015, DriveNets has been self-funded until today.

The company aims to solve one of the greatest threats facing the telecommunications industry today: how to prevent profits slipping while demand for services is rapidly expanding, but customers are not paying more.

To ensure continued profitability, DriveNets’ Network Cloud software creates routing infrastructures that can grow linearly and run any service, at any scale from centralized clouds.

By using existing software stacks and “white box” hardware to create an on-demand infrastructure, communication service providers are able to handle increasing demand while keeping expenditure in check.

Since 2017, DriveNets’ technology has been used by a leading North American service provider, and the company has accrued revenues of tens of millions of dollars. It currently employs 150 workers and is planning to expand its staff to 200 employees by the end of 2019.

“We believe Network Cloud will become the networking model of the future,” said DriveNets’ cofounder and CEO Ido Susan, who previously founded Intucell – which was acquired by Cisco for $475m. in 2013.

“We’ve challenged many of the assumptions behind traditional routing infrastructures and created a technology that will allow service providers to address their biggest challenges like the exponential capacity growth, 5G deployments and low-latency AI applications. We are pleased that investors like Bessemer and Pitango share our vision.”

Cofounder Hillel Kobrinsky previously established web conferencing specialist Interwise, which was acquired by AT&T for $121m. in 2007.

“DriveNets’ Network Cloud does to service provider networks what Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Facebook have done to compute and storage in data centers,” said Aaron Mankovski, Pitango Growth Managing General Partner, who will now join DriveNets’ board of directors.

“It creates a unified shared networking resource that can deliver any service on any port – and at any scale.”