Networking Startup Pensando Raises $145 Million in Series C Funding

By Colin Kellaher

Pensando Systems, a networking startup launched by Cisco Systems Inc.'s famed "MPLS" team, has raised $145 million Series C funding round led by Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE) and Lightspeed Venture Partners and has named long-time Cisco chief John Chambers chairman.

The San Jose company, which has been operating in stealth mode, also unveiled its flagship software-defined edge services platform that it said will compete with the Nitro system from Amazon.com Inc.'s (AMZN) Amazon Web Services cloud unit.

Pensando said the funding, which brings the total amount raised to $278 million, follows a $71 million founder-led Series A round and a $62 million customer-led series B round.

Pensando said it will use the funding to accelerate engineering, operations and go-to-market activities.

Former Cisco executives Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero and Soni Jiandani, who created some of the company's biggest hit products, launched Pensando in 2017 after resigning from Cisco in an apparent disagreement with their roles under a reorganization under Chuck Robbins, who succeeded Mr. Chambers as CEO.

The team, dubbed MPLS after the initials of their first names, became wealthy by forming product-development startups that Cisco first funded and then later acquired in a strategy favored by Mr. Chambers, who ran Cisco for two decades.

Mr. Chambers, who stepped down as CEO of Cisco in 2015 and retired as chairman in 2017, went on to launch a venture-capital fund, JC2 Ventures, with $100 million of his own money and invested in Pensando in an earlier round.

Another former Cisco executive, Randy Pond, later joined Pensando as chief financial officer.

In addition to Hewlett Packard and Lightspeed, Pensando said its investors include Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The company also has partnerships with Oracle Corp. (ORCL), NetApp Inc. (NTAP) and Equinix Inc. (EQIX).

Pensando said its platform delivers highly programmable software-defined cloud, compute, networking, storage and security services wherever data is located.

The company said Mark Potter, Hewlett Packard's chief technology officer, and Barry Eggers, a Lightspeed founding partner, have joined its board.

-Don Clark contributed to this article.

Write to Colin Kellaher at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 16, 2019 14:17 ET (18:17 GMT)

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