NS1 raises $33 million to provide DNS services to apps and websites

NS1, a New York-based company developing web and app traffic management solutions for enterprises, today revealed that it has secured $33 million in a series C funding round led by Dell Technologies Capital, with participation from Cisco Investments and a raft of existing investors, including Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners, Entrée Capital, Flybridge Capital Partners, GGV Capital, Mango Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Sigma Prime Ventures, Telstra Ventures, and Two Sigma Ventures. The fresh capital brings NS1’s total raised to over $85 million, following a $20 million series B in September 2016, and CEO Kris Beevers says it will be used to better meet customers’ edge computing and internet of things (IoT) needs.

The infusion comes after a banner year for NS1, whose over 450 customers globally include LinkedIn, Imgur, Encrypt.Me, Teridion, Bleacher Report, the Guardian, Dropbox, Pitney Bowes, a top 5 U.S. airline, a top 10 U.S. automotive company, a top 10 global gaming company, and a top online payment provider. NS1 claims its traffic control and delivery products power some of the most highly trafficked apps on the web, and it says it has experienced a nearly 90% compound growth rate since 2016.

“The rapid adoption of hybrid and multi-cloud, edge computing, DevOps, and microservices [has] increased complexity within the application traffic management stack and amplified expectations of how applications should connect and perform,” said Beevers, who cofounded NS1 with Alex Vayl and Jonathan Sullivan in 2013. “NS1’s modern traffic management solutions gather real-time intelligence in order to deliver smart routing decisions that have a profound impact on performance, security, and resiliency. We enable enterprise operations and application traffic teams to overcome complexity and often unpredictable conditions in infrastructure to deliver the best and safest user experiences.”

For the uninitiated, NS1, whose platform is built to act on real-time data, automates common protocols and processes, like traffic routing, server load balancing, DNS, DHCP, and IP Address Management (IPAM). It lets companies deploy and optimize apps in distributed, heterogeneous infrastructure — either on-premises or in the cloud — and its DNS suite provides protection against distributed denial-of-service attacks and delivers up-to-the-minute telemetry data from users.

In addition to managed, dedicated, enterprise, and private DNS services for websites and apps, all of which boast instant propagation and integration with popular DevOps tools, NS1 offers a managed DNS for China designed to solve “the unique challenges of delivering high-performing online services” in the region. Additionally, it provides a managed service that handles things like migrating from another DNS provider, changing infrastructure, adding a second DNS, and optimizing app delivery.

“There’s a profound shift underway in infrastructure that requires a new generation of management solutions that automate, protect, and improve the delivery of constantly connected applications and services,” said Dell Technologies Capital managing director Tyler Jewell, who plans to join NS1’s board of directors. “We’re thrilled to have NS1 join our portfolio of leading-edge companies delivering world-changing technologies and benefit from our expertise and resources to accelerate growth, market and customer access, and scale.”

Markets and Markets estimated that the DNS services market will be worth $438.8 million by 2022, up from $238.9 million in 2017.