Funding
Elon Musk’s space exploration company SpaceX has raised $1 billion in financing from two new investors, Google and Fidelity. The two new investors joined previous backers Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Valor Equity Partners and Capricorn and will own just under 10% of the company collectively. The company will use the funds for continued innovation in the space transport, reusability and satellite manufacturing areas, according to a company statement.
Virtualization management software provider VMTurbo has closed a new round of funding worth $50 million, led by ICONIQ Capital. The funds will be used for product development and growth, according to a company statement. “It’s been an incredible year at VMTurbo,” said CEO Ben Nye. “Repeat purchasing grew 222% in Q4 as more and more VMTurbo customers automated control of their virtualized data centers. This customer-driven growth has enabled us to achieve a 234% compounded annual growth rate since inception.”
Series D
Stack Exchange, the company behind Stack Overflow, an accumulation of programmer’s knowledge, has announced a $40 million Series D round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. Previous backers Bezos Expeditions, Index Ventures, Spark Capital, and Union Square Ventures also participated. The company, which has now raised $70 million to date, will use the funds to scale up the Stack Exchange offering. “We’re devoted to making developers successful,” says Joel Spolsky, co-founder and CEO in a statement. “Stack Overflow has grown to be so popular that it is trusted by every developer when they hit a problem. While other question websites have come and gone, our obsessive dedication to serving developers has put us in the top 50. If you’re a great company looking to hire software engineers, well, we’ve got ’em right here.”
Software defined network (SDN) startup Pluribus Networks has closed a $50 million Series D funding round led by Temasek Holdings. Pluribus has now raised $95 million to date and the latest round involved previous investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Menlo Ventures, Mohr Davidow and AME Cloud Ventures. “Pluribus is one of the few companies in the IT infrastructure space that has taken a platform approach to deliver on the promise of SDN network programmability, operational simplicity and unification of the economic model of computing and networking,” said Kittu Kolluri, general partner, NEA. “We are pleased to be able to help catalyze the company’s execution and look forward to its expansion in the next few months as the best funded and most innovative SDN startup in the market.”