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Telstra’s venture capital arm has tipped in $10 million into a start-up that plays a crucial role in keeping some of the busiest properties on the internet up and running.
San Francisco-based Nginx isn’t a household name but application delivery platform is used by the biggest and best on the internet. From Netflix to Instagram more than 140 sites rely on the platform to do the heavy lifting when it comes to web page performance on any given browser.
According to Telstra, Nginx’s technology is used on more than 140 million sites around the world, including the telco’s. It’s also immensely popular among the top 1000 busiest websites in the world, with 49.2 per cent of them choosing to use the Nginx platform over Apache, Microsoft- IIS and Google servers.
Telstra Ventures’ US managing director Mark Sherman said the investment was “driven by the company’s strong market growth as well as its growing technology leadership in the application delivery and deployment marketâ€.
“When you look under the hood of many of the most popular websites around the world today you find NGINX’s technology. This business continues to grow their share of the web server market and has compelling value-add propositions to sell,†Mr Sherman said in a statement.
“They consistently deliver improved capabilities and performance for video heavy sites, and sites experiencing high traffic volumes.â€
It’s Telstra Venture’s 27th strategic investment in a technology firm possessing a platform and capabilities that the telco can harness to either enhance its network and applications (NAS) capabilities or develop viable digital businesses.
The total amount of money invested by Telstra Ventures arm is estimated to be around the $500 million arm and the unit has offices in Melbourne and San Francisco.
Nginx’s technology is sound and its growing popularity makes is a sound investment for Telstra but whether it becomes anything more substantial remains to be seen.
One of Telstra Venture’s earliest investment, video delivery and analytics firm Ooyala, has been able to make the transition from a strategic asset to a core property for Telstra.
Telstra Ventures led Ooyala’s $US35m Series E round in 2012. The telco subsequently bought the company outright for $US270m in 2014, on top of its initial investment. Ooyala now operates as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Telstra and the telco has committed more than $200m more — taking its total investment in the company to more than $500m — to support and expand its operations.
With AAP