Packet Raises $9.4 Million Series A Led by SoftBank

September 14, 2016 - Packet, the leading bare metal cloud for developers, today announced it has closed a $9.4 million Series A funding round led by SoftBank Corp. ("SoftBank"). In addition to the capital round, the companies have formed a strategic partnership to bring Packet's bare metal server automation technology and public cloud services to Japan.

"As one of the most forward-looking investors in the world, SoftBank is a natural partner for our vision of automating fundamental infrastructure, no matter where it is," said Zachary Smith, Packet's CEO. "In a market dominated by giants, we feel that a bold partner comfortable with challenging the status quo is exactly what we need to aggressively expand our current momentum in the global cloud marketplace and bring our infrastructure automation expertise to private datacenters."

Packet's proprietary technology automates physical servers and networks without the use of virtualization or multi-tenancy to provide on-demand compute and connectivity. With existing public cloud datacenters in New York, Silicon Valley and Amsterdam, a strong entrance into Asia's fast-growing cloud market and the Japanese enterprise market is a powerful step forward.

"Packet's team has built an incredible solution and has already captured the attention of a wide set of partners and clients in North America and Europe," said Eric Gan, Executive Vice President, head of Business Development at SoftBank Corp. "We look forward to working together to extend their reach in Asia."

With the adoption of container technologies like Docker and Kubernetes, demand for single tenant automated infrastructure is growing exponentially. Since launching in August 2015, Packet has seen strong growth among developers, SaaS platforms and large enterprises. The company has attracted thousands of users and a broad range of use cases, from on-demand private clouds to cloud native platforms built using Docker, Kubernetes, Mesos and more.

DH Capital served as exclusive financial advisor to Packet on the transaction.

About Packet
Founded in 2014, Packet brings public cloud style automation to the internet's physical hardware and network layers with no vendor lock in. Customers can either build on Packet's public cloud service or leverage advanced automation software to enable their own private compute infrastructure. The company is headquartered in New York City and maintains an advanced global IP network between its data center locations in New York Metro (Parsippany, NJ), Sunnyvale (CA) and Amsterdam (NL). Packet is a member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and supports many open source projects, including Memcached.org, which uses Packet to perform automatic performance and burn-in testing of new features. For more information visit www.packet.net.

About SoftBank Corp.
SoftBank Corp., a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp. (TOKYO: 9984), provides mobile communication, fixed-line communication and Internet connection services to customers in Japan. Leveraging synergies with other companies in the SoftBank Group, SoftBank Corp. aims to transform lifestyles through ICT and expand into other business areas including IoT, robotics and energy. To learn more, please visit www.softbank.jp/en/corp/group/sbm/