Andreessen Horowitz is a venture capital firm specializing in investing in seed, start-ups, early, mid-stage, growth, and late-stage. It prefers to invest in the social media business and technology sector with a focus on software, back-end infrastructure, the infrastructure of the Internet, cloud computing, enterprise software and services, consumer, business Internet, mobile-Internet, consumer Internet, cloud computing, data storage, social network browsers data-storage, consumer electronics, networking functions, software related biology, biotech, and medicine companies at the intersection of computer science and life sciences with a focus on digital therapeutics, cloud technology in biology, and computational medicine.

Andreessen Horowitz

Google is a multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. Their products address a wide range of use cases, including email, navigation, cloud computing, web browsing, video sharing, productivity, operating systems, cloud storage, language translation, photo storage, video calling, smart home, smartphones, wearable technology, music streaming, and more.

Google

SV Angel is a service organization, investing in founders who share these values. They support entrepreneurs in building lasting companies by assisting at key inflection points and leveraging networks to help them propel their businesses forward.

SV Angel

Cisco Investments is an active investor with more than 40 investment professionals with deep market and technology expertise located in major geographies, including US, Canada, China, India, Israel, and Europe. Over the last 20 years, Cisco Investments has invested in hundreds of companies across different segments and helped them build to successful IPOs or acquisitions. They currently have an active portfolio of $2B with over 80 direct investments around the world, and they also hold Limited Partner positions in over 35 funds globally.

Cisco Investments

Mango Capital is a venture capital company. The company prefers to invest in seed/early-stage companies in the enterprise software sector. Mango Capital is headquartered in San Francisco Bay Area, West Coast and was founded in 2018.

Mango Capital

Thomvest is a cross-stage venture capital firm specializing in early-stage, growth-stage, start-up, and mid-venture investments. The company primarily focuses on opportunities with early-to-mid-stage companies in the fields of financial technology, marketing technology, cybersecurity, sales, and cloud infrastructure sectors. As part of their focus on these areas, they are committed to helping their companies become leaders in their fields through their work with them and through the focus on understanding where value can be created in these industries, as can be seen from the research they publish regularly.

Thomvest Ventures

Cisco is a technology company specializing in networking hardware, software, and telecommunications equipment. The company continues to offer a wide range of networking solutions, including routers, switches, network security products, wireless and mobility solutions, collaboration tools, data center technologies, and more. Cisco's products and services are still used by businesses, organizations, service providers, and individuals to build and manage networks, facilitate communication, and enhance connectivity across various industries.

Cisco

M12 - Microsoft’s venture fund, invests in early-stage enterprise software companies with a focus on AI, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, developer tools, vertical SaaS, and Web3/Gaming. Since 2016, M12 has invested in over 100 companies, helping startups accelerate growth with unparalleled access to Microsoft.

M12 - Microsoft's Venture Fund

South Korean investment firm, headquartered in Seoul.

Mirae Asset Capital

Grafana Accelerator Program focuses on nurturing early-stage companies and side projects that are innovating in the wider Grafana ecosystem. It provides free Grafana cloud accounts, Grafana Enterprise subscriptions, cash grants and equity financing, and inside access to the core Grafana Labs developers.

Grafana Accelerator Program

Isovalent

Isovalent is the company founded by the creators of Cilium and eBPF. Isovalent builds open-source software and enterprise solutions solving networking, security, and observability needs for modern cloud native infrastructure. The flagship technology Cilium is the choice of leading global organizations including Adobe, AWS, Capital One, Datadog, GitLab, Google, and many more. Isovalent is headquartered in Cupertino, CA and Zurich, Switzerland.

Isovalent is a software company specializing in eBPF-based (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) networking and security solutions for cloud-native environments.

Building future-ready applications in the cloud

Cloud-native Tech

Cisco Strengthens Multicloud Security Portfolio with Acquisition of Isovalent

The acquisition of Isovalent will build on the Cisco Security Cloud vision, an AI-driven, cloud delivered, integrated security platform for organizations of any shape and size.

Vendors offering execution environment (runtime) solutions. This encompasses everything a container needs to run in a cloud-native environment, including the code used to start a container.

To integrate Insovalent’s capabilities into its AI-driven, integrated, hybrid cloud security platform, the Cisco Security Cloud.

Azure

Microsoft and Isovalent formed a strategic partnership to enhance Microsoft Azure with eBPF technology, providing advanced networking capabilities for Kubernetes and containerized deployments.

Isovalent is a software company specializing in eBPF-based (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) networking and security solutions for cloud-native environments.Its main products include Cilium and Hubble, which address challenges in Kubernetes networking and observability. Cilium provides enhanced network connectivity, security, and load balancing within Kubernetes clusters, while Hubble offers network visibility and monitoring capabilities.Isovalent has played a significant role in the development and advancement of eBPF. It co-maintains the eBPF codebase upstream in the Linux kernel with ongoing development, and thus ensure its compatibility with mainstream Linux distributions.Isovalent follows a direct sales model.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25490">December 2023 </a>, Cisco announced its intent to acquire Isovalent for an undisclosed sum. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of the 2024 fiscal year.Key customers and partnershipsIsovalent serves companies from startups to large enterprises across various industries. This list includes HP Enterprise, Polish Railways, University Hospital Basel, Comcast, and Daily Motion.Isovalent has alliances with many prominent companies in the industry, either as an application partnership (Veeam, Splunk, Oracle, Philips, and Rubrik) or a Cloud Partnership (AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and Wasabi).Funding and financialsAs of June 2023, Isovalent’s latest fundraising was in 2022 from a USD 40 million Series B round led by Thomvest Ventures. The funds raised were to advance the development of Cilium and eBPF, expand Isovalent’s team, strengthen partnerships, and provide enhanced products and support to enterprise customers.

SingleStore is a company that provides a distributed SQL database platform for real-time analytics and operational applications.SingleStore’s platform combines the scalability of NoSQL with the querying capabilities of SQL. It enables organizations to ingest, process, and analyze large volumes of data in real-time, making it ideal for applications that require fast and accurate data processing. SingleStore solves the problem of handling massive amounts of data and delivering real-time insights for use cases such as real-time analytics, operational analytics, and high-velocity transactional applications.SingleStore's competitive advantage is its ability to handle analytical and transactional workloads in a single platform. It allows businesses to consolidate their data infrastructure, simplifying management and reducing operational costs.SingleStore operates with a sales model that includes direct sales and partnerships with technology and solution providers. It offers different pricing and licensing options tailored to the needs of its customers, including subscription-based models.Key customers and partnershipsSingleStore serves some of the largest tech and non-tech enterprises across various industries, including Comcast, Cisco, Akamai Technologies, Fiverr, Goldman Sachs, Sony, Siemens, Hulu.SingleStore partners with all major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud) and has technology partnerships with Dell, Red Hat, Intel, HP Enterprise, and Looker.Funding and financialsAs of June 2023, SingleStore’s latest fundraising was in October 2022 from a USD 30 million Series F round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Prosperity7 Ventures. The funds were slated to fuel SingleStore’s growth and various strategic initiatives.

SingleStore

Platform9 is an open-distributed cloud company that offers solutions for managing hybrid clouds, Kubernetes, and more. Platform9 offers several products and solutions, including Managed Kubernetes, Managed OpenStack, and Managed Bare Metal.Managed Kubernetes allows businesses to deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters across any infrastructure, while Managed OpenStack offers a simplified way to deploy and manage private clouds. Managed Bare Metal enables businesses to run Kubernetes, OpenStack, and other workloads on dedicated hardware with bare-metal performance.Platform9 claims to deliver a seamless Kubernetes experience across any infrastructure. Platform9's SaaS-managed Kubernetes solution offers a single view to manage Kubernetes clusters running on any cloud or on-premises infrastructure, including bare metal servers, vSphere, and public clouds such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Azure, providing customers with a unified Kubernetes experience. In addition, Platform9 offers automated security patching, on-demand upgrades, self-healing clusters, multi-version support, and audit logging.Platform9 has a subscription-based sales model. It offers its services on a pay-as-you-go basis, with pricing based on the number of managed nodes or instances, with optional add-ons for additional features and support.Key customers and partnershipsPlatform9 targets enterprise customers who run and manage Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies on distributed cloud services, whether on-premises or in the public cloud. Its customers typically include large organizations with complex IT environments, such as financial services, healthcare, technology, and retail companies.As of mid-2022, Platform9 catered to more than 60 enterprise clients and powered 40,000 nodes across private, public, and edge clouds.Platform9 has partnerships with various cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Additionally, in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32723">August 2024</a>, Platform9 partnered with Fairwinds, a managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service provider, to tackle issues related to Kubernetes over-provisioning and cost management costs in public cloud deployments.

Platform9

Mirantis is a technology company that provides cloud-native software and services to help businesses modernize their IT infrastructure.Mirantis specializes in open-source software, focusing on Kubernetes, OpenStack, and related technologies. Its core offering is the Mirantis Cloud Native Platform, a managed Kubernetes service that provides a complete set of tools for deploying and managing containerized applications. The platform helps organizations adopt and scale Kubernetes quickly and easily, with features like automated provisioning, integrated monitoring, and self-service access to resources. Mirantis also offers professional services including consulting, training, and support for Kubernetes, OpenStack, and related technologies.Mirantis sells its products and services through a subscription-based model. Customers can choose from various annual subscription plans, depending on their needs.Key customers and partnershipsMirantis focuses on enterprise customers who deploy and manage large-scale private clouds. Some of its high-profile customers include Volkswagen Group, Société Générale, S&amp;P Global, Paypal, Volkswagen, and GSK.Mirantis also has technology partnerships with several companies, including Arm, Cisco, Entrust, and Fujitsu, and hardware vendors like Dell EMC, Intel, and Supermicro.

Mirantis

Rafay Systems is a cloud-native platform that automates deployment, life cycle management, and scaling of containerized applications across all cloud infrastructure.Rafay's platform provides enterprises with the tools to deploy and manage containerized applications, microservices, and serverless functions in a scalable and efficient way. The platform provides features including multi-cluster management, automated workload scaling, automated application recovery, and granular application-level access controls. Rafay also provides a Kubernetes-native API gateway that simplifies managing and securing microservices, and includes capabilities to include support for graphics processing unit-based workloads.Additionally, Rafay Systems <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29580">offers an AI suite</a> to simplify AI application development and deployment. This suite includes pre-configured LLMOps Playgrounds, a turnkey MLOps pipeline, central management of LLM providers and prompts, and AI data source integrations and governance. It also offers a cost optimization suite to help IT professionals manage Kubernetes expenses with dynamic cluster scaling, auto-rightsizing, policy application, and simplified infrastructure.Rafay has a subscription-based sales model and offers its platform as a service. The pricing is based on the number of clusters, nodes per cluster, and the amount of data transferred.Key customers and partnershipsRafay’s target customer segments are enterprises, service providers, and software vendors. Some of its notable clients include Verizon, Equinix, Samsung, Moneygram, and the US Air Force.In 2022, Rafay launched its Technical Alliance Program (TAP), which brings together technology and solutions providers to develop joint solutions to simplify and streamline Kubernetes management and operations. Partners of the program include GitLab Inc., F5 NGINX, MinIO, New Relic, and Sysdig. Meanwhile, Rafay’s public cloud and managed Kubernetes partners include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Oracle.

Rafay Systems

Docker, Inc. is a technology company developing productivity tools centered around Docker, a software container platform that automates the deployment of code inside containers.Docker, Inc's major commercial products include Docker Hub, a central repository for containers, and Docker Desktop, a GUI application that enables Windows and Mac users to manage containers.Docker's ease of use, portability, resource efficiency, scalability, and strong ecosystem has made it a popular solution for deploying and managing applications in various environments.Docker has a subscription-based sales model. Docker also collaborates with various channel partners, including technology resellers, system integrators, and value-added distributors to expand its reach.Moreover, Docker has made several strategic acquisitions to enhance its capabilities: AtomicJar (2023), Nestybox (2022), SocketPlane (2015), and Tutum (2015), among others.Key customers and partnershipsAs of December 2022, the platform was used by more than 18 million developers. As of March 2022, the company served more than 56,000 commercial customers, including Adobe, Netflix, PayPal, Verizon, and Target.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27771">March 2024</a>, Docker expanded its partnership with Red Hat to integrate Testcontainers Cloud into the Red Hat OpenShift platform. This partnership aimed to streamline the process of building cloud-native applications and facilitate real-world testing using Docker containers.Docker’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) was more than USD 50 million in 2021.

Docker

Vendors offering cloud-native infrastructure or provisioning, which is the first layer in the cloud-native landscape. It encompasses tools to create and harden the foundation of cloud-native apps.

Vendors offering solutions for application definition and development. This layer focuses on the tools that enable engineers to build cloud-native applications

Vendors offering orchestration and management solutions including tools to handle running and connecting cloud-native applications.

Vendors offering observability, including tools to understand a cloud system from its external outputs, measured by CPU time, memory, disk space, latency, errors, etc.

Vendors that bundle different tools from different layers together into a platform, solving a larger problem. These can include an orchestration tool, a container runtime, service discovery, networking, an API gateway, etc.

Provide tools to design and build applications for deployment and operation in cloud environments

Disruptors are using Generative AI for AI-based assistants and help-bots, while others provide the technology for developing and deploying Gen AI applications and models.

AI-based solutions for evolving digital threats

Next-gen Cybersecurity

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

INCUMBENTS_PRESENT

<div>
 
 Cisco plans to acquire Isovalent, a cloud-native networking and security firm. Isovalent specializes in open-source extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) technology and has developed Cilium, a security solution for cloud workloads. The acquisition is set to close in Q3 of the 2024 fiscal year. 
 Cisco plans to integrate Isovalent's capabilities into its hybrid cloud security platform, the Cisco Security Cloud. The company also announced two new AI-powered assistants and an encrypted visibility engine for its firewall models in December. 
 
</div> Analyst QuickTake : Isovalent is the latest in a long run of cybersecurity acquisitions by Cisco this year. In September, the networking giant announced a mega USD 28 billion deal to <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22088"> acquire </a> <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1410"> Splunk </a> , having acquired email threat detection platform <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/522304"> Armorblox </a> , identity management firm <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1013307"> Oort </a> , cloud security companies <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/617833"> Valtix </a> , and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1157591"> Lightspin </a> <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/617833"> earlier </a> in 2023.

Isovalent

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