CDN provider Fastly raises $50 million to help online companies deliver content at speed

Fastly, a content delivery network (CDN) provider, has announced a $50 million series E round of funding led by Sorenson Capital, with participation from Sapphire Ventures, Iconiq Capital, Amplify Partners, August Capital, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), and IDG Ventures.

Founded out of San Francisco in 2011, Fastly’s cloud-based edge platform helps content-focused companies, including the New York Times, Airbnb, Spotify, and Pinterest, operate globally at scale with protection from external security threats and minimal downtime.

CDNs essentially operate by hosting a network of proxy servers in a number of different regions around the world so that end-users can access the content quickly.

Fastly has now raised around $180 million in total, including a $75 million round less than two years ago. With its latest cash injection, the company says it plans to support continued growth in products and services, while also expanding into new markets.

Fastly also reports that it has achieved more than 100 percent annualized revenue growth, based on the last two quarters, and is “quickly approaching” the break-even point, according to a statement issued by the company.

“Enterprise brands rely increasingly on edge cloud services to support overwhelming consumer demand for dynamic, secure experiences across web, mobile, and IoT,” said Fastly CEO and founder Artur Bergman. “This additional funding will help accelerate Fastly’s exponential growth trajectory and allow us to continue adding value for our existing customer base.”

The global public cloud services market is expected to hit almost $250 billion in 2017, according to a recent report by Gartner, while the CDN market specifically is thought to be worth around $6 billion at present, according to MarketsandMarkets.

A number of notable players currently operate in the CDN realm, including Amazon’s AWS CloudFront, CloudFlare, Akamai, and Google’s very own Cloud CDN service.

“Fastly has consistently demonstrated strong growth and is exceptionally well-positioned to address increasing market demand for cloud services at the edge of the network,” added Sorenson Capital managing director Rob Rueckert.