Investors Make Huge $261 Million Bet On Rubrik

Rubrik Tuesday unveiled a huge $261 million round of funding, giving it the kind of financial backing that would send other companies to the IPO trough although the company's CEO said an IPO is not a goal.

The new E-Series funding of $261 million brings total funding in Rubrik to over $553 million, and gives the Palo Alto, Calif.-based developer of cloud data management technology a $3.3 billion valuation.

Bipul Sinha, Rubrik co-founder and CEO, told CRN that the new funding validates his company's focus on developing a data management platform and on focusing exclusively on the channel for sales.

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"Our ambition is to become the data management platform for governments and for the largest enterprises in the world, and this can only be done though the channel," Sinha said. "As the world is getting more complex with cloud and other new technologies, people need a trusted adviser who … understands the holistic needs of the customer."

Sinha said that despite the large valuation Rubrik has received because of the investments, the company does not have an IPO as one of its goals, although that will happen eventually.

Going public depends on the state of the market and the readiness of the company considering an IPO, he said.

"We want to be a public company," he said. "But our goal is not to go public. It is not healthy for us to focus on going public. Our core focus is on customer success, innovation and corporate culture."

Sinha said the same thing when asked about profitability.

"We want to become a profitable company," he said. "But not at the cost of growth. Now we're taking advantage of the market condition to build the company. … We're focused on the opportunity in front of us: becoming a fast-growing, responsible company. We can become profitable at any time."

Much of the funding from the new round will be used to invest in developing Rubrik's technology around security, compliance and governance, Sinha said.

"The first act of Rubrik was to build comprehensive technology for backups and protecting customers' data," he said. "Now we're focusing on data intelligence. Last year, we released Rubrik Radar with its focus on intelligence and machine learning."

Sinha said Rubrik's competitors are still mainly at that first-stage focus on backing up data. "Our strategy is to become a core backup and recovery company, but more important add services on top of that," he said. "Backup and recovery is just a starting point."

The new funding round for Rubrik reflects the confidence investors have in Rubrik's technology, said Mike Carter, founder and principal of eGroup, a Mt. Pleasant, S.C.-based solution provider and Rubrik channel partner.

"This also increases the extraordinary confidence on the consumer side of where Rubrik is heading," Carter told CRN.

Rubrik is certainly doing all the right things, Carter said. "Rubrik is a strategic partner for eGroup," he said. "They're doing everything from the partner perspective. It's a refreshing story."

Ned Engelke, chief technology officer at Evotek, a San Diego-based solution provider and Rubrik partner, told CRN there's a large market for data management across on-premises and cloud environments and Rubrik is one of the best-positioned to capitalize on it.

"Rubrik is interesting because of its focus on data management, but in a way that deals with the part of the data that matters, including an application focus," Engelke said.

Rubrik's new funding round includes funding from the company's previous investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures and IVP, as well as new investor Bain Capital Ventures.