Wasabi becomes a unicorn with $250M funding to usher in a new era of cloud storage and take on Amazon S3

Hot cloud storage startup Wasabi Technologies is the newest to attain the highly unicorn status after closing a new financing round. Today, Wasabi announced it has closed $250 million at over $1.1 billion valuation, making it the latest member of the highly coveted unicorn club.

The round includes $125 million raised in Series D equity led by L2 Point Management with participation from Cedar Pine; an affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management; and returning investors including Fidelity Management & Research Company and Forestay Capital, bringing the company’s valuation to over $1.1 billion. Wasabi also expanded its existing debt facility with MGG Investment Group to $125 million. Barclays acted as the sole placement agent on the transaction.

Wasabi said it will use the funding proceeds from the new equity to drive expansion into additional vertical markets and geographies, enhance its channel partnerships, and scale the company’s go-to-market team and global brand strategies. Meanwhile, the debt will be used to finance capital equipment and infrastructure in Wasabi’s storage regions around the world, and to invest in Wasabi’s technology capabilities to lay the groundwork for a new generation of cloud storage architecture.

As you may remember, we covered Wasabi back in 2019 when the hot cloud storage startup secured investment from NTT DOCOMO Ventures to take on Amazon S3. Wasabi’s expertise is solely focused on disruptive technology that delivers hot cloud storage at 1/5th the price of Amazon and faster than competitors with no charges for egress or API requests.

Founded in 2015 by Carbonite co-founders and cloud storage pioneers David Friend (CEO) and Jeff Flowers, the Boston, MA-basedWasabi delivers disruptive storage technology fast, low-cost, and reliable cloud storage. Amazon locks companies into their expensive storage and nobody likes vendor lock-in. Wasabi hot storage is 1/5th the price and 6x the speed of Amazon S3. Unlike the first-generation cloud vendors, Wasabi is solely focused on providing the world’s best cloud object storage service.

Wasabi provides fast, affordable, and highly reliable cloud data storage for businesses all over the world at 1/5th the cost of large hyper-scale providers or on-premises storage, with no charges for egress or API requests and no complex tiering. The company’s revenues more than doubled from 2020-2021, and Wasabi now has more than 40,000 customers in over 100 countries, 13,000 partners, 250+ global employees, and 13 storage regions across North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific.

“Closing a large up round in this environment speaks to the spectacular growth of Wasabi, the magnitude of the cloud storage opportunity, and our leadership as the industry’s largest pure-play cloud storage vendor. At Wasabi, we focus on just one thing: cloud storage. We do it better than anyone else in the industry. Because of this singular focus, our team has achieved best-in-class performance and security at the lowest prices in the industry,” Friend said.

Kerstin Dittmar, managing partner of lead investor L2 Point, will join Wasabi’s Board of Directors. “Wasabi provides a game-changing product that offers customers a simpler, faster, and significantly more economical solution to their cloud data storage needs. We believe this capital raise will allow Wasabi to continue to expand its offering across additional services and geographies to meet their global customers’ needs,” said Dittmar.

“We are proud to partner with Wasabi to provide innovative solutions in cloud storage and security,” added Sam Barnett, Ph.D., executive chairman of Cedar Pine. “The importance of Wasabi’s technology is increasing in every industry.”

Kevin Griffin, CEO of MGG Investment Group, also commented, “We seek to partner with best-in-class entrepreneurs and companies and are excited to continue supporting Wasabi Technologies and their global expansion.”

In addition to the industry-leading performance of Wasabi hot cloud storage, the company partners with over 350 technology companies, including most of the world’s leading backup, disaster recovery, and surveillance companies. Wasabi is used to store data across a wide range of industries, including professional sports, energy and natural resources, finance, surveillance, education, manufacturing, consumer technology, healthcare, scientific research, and media and entertainment.

“As our data needs continue to evolve, from player analytics, IoT, digital assets, and even security, this presents an enormous learning opportunity for the organization,” said Brian Shield, senior vice president and CTO of the Boston Red Sox. “Wasabi provides a cost-effective cloud-based solution that enables us to retrieve content quickly and improve the level of video analysis and production we do here at the Red Sox.”