ZeroTier, a virtual networking company simplifying connectivity, has raised $13.5 million in Series A funding. The funding round was led by Battery Ventures, a global technology-focused investment firm, with participation from Bonfire Ventures, Anorak Ventures, Grand Enterprises BV, Airbridge Equity Partners, First In Ventures, and 7percent Ventures. ZeroTier currently supports over three million connected devices and 600,000 network administrators across more than 230 countries and territories.
Alongside this financing, ZeroTier has appointed tech startup founder and investor Andrew Gault as CEO. Gault, a former CTO and programmer with expertise in Edge devices and networking, co-founded the video game streaming platform Gaikai, which sold to Sony for $380 million in 2012, and was the first investor in Oculus VR, which sold to Meta for $2 billion in 2014. As a founding partner of 7percent Ventures, Gault has invested in over 100 companies, including Universal Quantum, Vaire Computing, and Gensyn AI. He personally holds 31 patents.
“With Internet-connected devices outnumbering humans by a factor of three, the need for secure connectivity between devices is skyrocketing. Unfortunately, there are very few scalable, flexible and vendor-agnostic options available to enterprises today,” said Andrew Gault, CEO, ZeroTier. “ZeroTier lives at the crux of this market need, creating global private networks that easily connect devices directly to each other, no matter where they are in the world.”
ZeroTier’s financing will be used to drive ongoing innovation and product development, as well as to expand operations geographically to support the company’s strong global growth. For example, ZeroTier recently provided Metropolis, a company offering checkout-free parking payments, with a system that creates secure peer-to-peer connections between devices, along with a centralised monitoring platform. Metropolis’ network currently includes thousands of devices and is set to grow exponentially, reaching 40,000 connected devices within a year, and as many as 100,000 in two years.
“ZeroTier’s innovative approach to decentralised networking is helping many customers better and more easily connect Internet-enabled devices, people and data centres — and fuelling these businesses to perform more efficiently,” said Dharmesh Thakker, a Battery Ventures general partner. “ZeroTier truly has the potential to reshape how businesses and devices connect and collaborate in a digital-first world.”
ZeroTier complements existing network solutions while offering clear advantages over legacy VPN and other software-defined networking platforms. In addition to a robust community of over 400,000 engaged members, ZeroTier provides:
- Device-centric networking solutions purpose-built for large deployments of userless devices, as seen in IoT
- A software-defined solution that is hardware and ISP-agnostic, creating a bridge across disparate networks
- Built-in security features, including end-to-end encryption, unique cryptographic IDs for device authorisation, micro-segmentation of networks, and centralised security monitoring
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