Veeam, which helps its users secure and recover their data, has seen its valuation spike in a recent secondary sale that was aimed at bolstering the company’s cap table before an eventual IPO.
The Insight Partners-backed company said on Tuesday it had raised $2 billion in a secondary share sale that valued it at $15 billion. TPG led the investment, while Temasek, Neuberger Berman Capital Solutions and others participated. The sale will close in Q1 2025.
This sale triples Veeam’s price tag since it was acquired by Insight Partners for $5 billion in January 2020. The company recorded annual recurring revenue of $1.7 billion, according to financial results from the end of September, and is growing 18% year over year.
Veeam’s CEO, Anand Eswaran (pictured above), told TechCrunch that while the company didn’t need to raise capital, the timing was right to give their early investors and employees some liquidity. It also wanted to bring on strategic investors on the journey to an eventual IPO, Eswaran said, although he added the company doesn’t have a timeline for an exit yet.
“Welcoming select blue-chip, top-tier investors was critical,” Eswaran said. “If you look at the next phase of the journey, several milestones like an IPO, having a diversified, top-tier set of investors for such milestones is critical.”
Veeam seems to have accomplished part of that goal, given that the investors who have now come in all invest in both private and public assets — they would be less likely to sell their stake in Veeam at an IPO, unlike many private equity or venture capital funds.
The fresh $2 billion will be used to bulk up the company’s research and development team, and for acquisitions as the right opportunities arise, Eswaran said.
While the company doesn’t have specific M&A goals, it’s keeping an eye out for potential acquisition targets. Eswaran noted a few areas, like companies with AI technology that could help Veeam scale, data resilience businesses focused on workloads Veeam isn’t currently active in, and companies with adjacent or complementary tech.
When Veeam was founded 18 years ago, there wasn’t much competition in the data resilience sector, but the company now operates in a relatively crowded market, especially with the rise of both cloud and AI.
There are numerous other companies looking to help enterprises manage their data and keep it secure: Rubrik, for one, hit the public market with a $5.6 billion valuation earlier this year, and we also have late-stage startups like Cohesity (raised nearly $1 billion in venture capital) and Druva (raised more than $475 million).
“Competition is actually a good thing,” Eswaran said. “It pushes the industry and all of us to innovate faster.”
Seattle, Washington-based Veeam was founded in 2006 and has always been focused on data resilience and recovery. Its tech covers 150 different workloads, spanning SaaS to AI, and its customers include large corporations like Shell and Deloitte as well as federal and local governments like the City of New Orleans.
“We feel we are the best platform right now as shown by our No. 1 market share,” Eswaran said. “If anything, this oversubscribed round just validated our direction.”
