By Katie Roof
Software maker Grafana Labs has received a new investment that values the startup at $3 billion, a tenfold increase from two years ago.
The enterprise technology business said it raised $220 million in a funding round co-led by Sequoia Capital and Coatue Management. Existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lead Edge Capital and GIC also participated.
The business works with customers such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and PayPal Holdings Inc. to help visualize their data in dashboards that allow for better monitoring. Grafana’s customers include Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.
System lapses can cost such companies millions of dollars a minute, said Grafana co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Raj Dutt.
“We help companies like these build better software, make it more reliable, reduce downtime, troubleshoot issues,” Dutt said in an interview. “All of these things are getting super complicated and the importance is at an all-time high.”
The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated Grafana’s growth, Dutt said, adding that companies have become more dependent on their technology being in top shape as employees work from home.
Grafana, which is technically headquartered in New York, had a remote workforce even before 2020 and intends to retain that model in the long run, Dutt said.
The company may eventually hold an initial public offering. “We’re not on a war path to going public, but we do want that door to be open for us,” he said.
Carl Eschenbach, a Sequoia Capital partner, is joining Grafana’s board with the investment.
Grafana has “come up with a unique way to attack this massive problem” of monitoring cloud technology, Eschenbach said. He said Grafana’s vendor-neutral “big-tent approach” integrates its products with others from Splunk and Datadog.
