DriveNets, a telecom networking software company based in Israel, has raised $110 million in its first round of financing led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Israel’s Pitango Growth, with the participation of several private investors.
The new financing will help the company expand its product portfolio and penetrate new markets.
DriveNets said its software allows telecom communication service providers to handle demand without sacrificing profitability. Bringing networking to the cloud can accelerate new service rollouts.
DriveNets’ Network Cloud solution simplifies network operations, as it can create any network function from the same software stack and only two generic hardware building blocks.
DriveNets’ software runs over a low-cost white box hardware that can address any routing use case, helping CSPs open up and commoditize their physical infrastructure.
DriveNets was founded in late 2015 by Ido Susan and Hillel Kobrinsky and has been self-funded until now.
DriveNets’ co-founder and CEO, Ido Susan said: “We’ve created a technology that will allow service providers to address their biggest challenges like the exponential capacity growth, 5G deployments and low-latency AI applications.”
It achieved its first major contract in 2017 with a top North American service provider and has since recorded tens of millions of dollars in revenue. The company has 150 employees and plans to expand to 200 by the end of the year.
Ido Susan co-founded Intucell, which was acquired by enterprise networking company Cisco for $475 million while Hillel Kobrinsky founded Interwise, which was acquired by AT&T for $121 million. Intucell invented the Self Optimizing Network (SON). Kobrinsky is the web conferencing specialist.
