Platform9 closes $26 Million Financing led by Celesta Capital

Cota Capital and NGP Capital participate in financing.

Executive appointments ready the company for the next phase of growth.

Emilia A'Bell, former Oracle and Nokia revenue executive, joins as CRO. 

Ravi Jacob, former Intel Corporate Vice President and Treasurer, joins as CFO.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Platform9, the Open Distributed Cloud company, today announced that it has closed $26 million financing led by Celesta Capital, with participation from Cota Capital, NGP Capital, and other investors. This financing round comes on the back of three consecutive years of 100% growth in annual recurring revenue (ARR) for SaaS Kubernetes, led by enterprise interest in cloud-native distributed clouds. 

In addition to the financing, the company announced two significant appointments to the executive team to help scale the company rapidly. Former Oracle and Nokia sales executive, Emilia A'Bell joins as Chief Revenue Officer and former Intel Corporate Vice President, Ravi Jacob, joins as the company's Chief Financial Officer.

This financing will help accelerate Platform9's go-to-market (GTM) strategy and position the company to deliver scalable growth through more large-scale enterprise deployments. Platform9 has been accelerating its business momentum for the last fiscal year with 100% year-over-year (YoY) growth led by its Kubernetes service and 132% YoY net revenue retention.

"Platform9 continues to expand its market presence as many enterprises make strategic bets on cloud-native services in order to deliver better customer experiences closer to where they consume these services," said Sriram Viswanathan, founding managing partner of Celesta Capital. "Platform9's pioneering SaaS architectural approach for managing distributed clouds is a game changer for many enterprises on their cloud-native journey." 

"Today's modern enterprises need cloud-native technologies that enable speed and agility to propel business growth and stay ahead of the competition," said Bobby Yazdani, founder and partner, Cota Capital. "We look forward to helping Bhaskar and the Platform9 team deliver on the promise and potential of providing customers the power of the public cloud on the infrastructure of their choice."

"As the pioneer of the open distributed cloud architecture, Platform9 is uniquely positioned to capture a significant share of the market demand for enterprises and service providers that want to consume cloud on their terms: public, private, hybrid, edge, stores, or branches," said Bhaskar Gorti, CEO of Platform9. "We plan to leverage this new capital to drive our GTM strategy and accelerate growth through customer-centricity, industry focused solutions, and coordinated execution."

Emilia A'Bell, who has held senior executive positions at Oracle, SAP, Portal Software, and TOA Systems has been appointed to the role of Chief Revenue Officer. In this role, Emilia will be responsible for developing an effective GTM strategy and building a world-class team to deliver scalable growth. Emilia will be responsible for directing the solutions architects, customer success, field sales, inside sales development, and alliances teams on taking Platform9's game-changing solution to the next level.

Ravi Jacob has been appointed as the Chief Financial Officer. He was the corporate vice president and treasurer of Intel Corporation. As Treasurer, Ravi managed Intel's cash and investments, debt & equity capital markets activity, currency and other financial risks, customer credit and collections, retirement assets, and insurance matters. Prior to that, as Vice President, & Assistant Treasurer, Mergers & Acquisitions, he led a global team responsible for structuring and executing Intel Capital's acquisitions, divestitures, and strategic investment transactions.

About Platform9
Platform9 is the Open Distributed Cloud company, offering the power of the public cloud on infrastructure of customers' choice – powered by Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies. Public clouds are walled gardens, and DIY is difficult and time-consuming. Platform9 offers a third option – an open and faster option – enabling a better way to go cloud-native. Platform9's service powers 40K+ nodes across private, public, and edge clouds. Innovative enterprises like Juniper, Kingfisher Plc, Mavenir, Redfin, and Cloudera achieve 4x faster time-to-market, up to 90% reduction in operational costs, and 99.9% uptime. Platform9 is an inclusive, globally distributed company, backed by leading investors.

About Celesta Capital
Celesta Capital is a leading deep technology venture capital firm that leverages synergies between leading centers of innovation in the US, India, and Israel to create globally impactful enterprises. The Celesta team, with deep operating experience, has built multi-billion-dollar businesses at companies such as Intel, Cisco, Apple, and Flex. The firm has funded over 80 technology companies globally and actively invests in the following verticals: software, semiconductors, intelligent systems, bioconvergence, and industry transformers.

About Cota Capital
Cota Capital is a technology investment firm that partners with exceptional teams to build and grow timeless companies that enable the future. Cota delivers "knowledge capital," a differentiated combination of financial capital, deep operational expertise, know-how, impactful and data-driven market insights and intelligence, and a vast industry network. Together, these elements are put to work to empower Cota companies to execute their vision, unlock scale, minimize risk, and bring enduring ideas to life. For more information, please visit www.cotacapital.com.

Media contacts

Jennifer Harbour for Platform9
732.285.4306
[email protected]

Gabi Schindler for Cota Capital
650.766.7326
[email protected]

Robin Clewley for Celesta Capital
206.696.2388
[email protected]

SOURCE Platform9 Systems, Inc.