Five Companies That Came To Win This Week

For the week ending Aug. 22, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their ‘A’ game to the channel including Databricks, F5, Schneider Electric, Seemplicity and Net at Work.

The Week Ending Aug. 22

Topping this week’s Five Companies that Came to Win list is data and AI platform developer Databricks, which this week disclosed that it is about to close a “Series K” round of funding that will boost its market cap to more than $100 billion.

Also making this week’s list is F5 for a strategic acquisition in the cloud-native observability space, power protection and management company Schneider Electric for a new initiative to help partners capture a bigger slice of the IT infrastructure spending pie, remediations operations tech startup Seemplicity for its own successful funding round, and New York-based solution provider Net at Work for its own savvy acquisition.

Databricks Looks To Exceed $100B Valuation With New Funding Round

Data management and AI heavyweight Databricks this week said it expects to soon close a Series K funding round that will value the company at greater than $100 billion.

The San Francisco-based company said in a statement that it had signed a term sheet for the Series K funding round, which the company said it “expects to close soon with backing from existing investors,” but did not disclose how much funding it anticipates raising.

In January Databricks raised more than $10 billion in a Series J round of equity financing, along with a $5.25 billion credit facility. That funding round put the company’s market cap at $62 billion. Altogether the company has raised $14.7 billion in financing through 14 funding rounds.

In this week’s announcement Databricks said it expects to use the new capital to “accelerate its AI strategy” and fuel global growth. The company also anticipates using the funding “to support future AI acquisitions and deepen AI research.”

Databricks has previously used some of its funding for acquisitions including spending $1 billion to buy database startup Neon earlier this year and $1.3 billion to acquire generative AI startup MosaicML in June 2023.

The additional financial resources are likely to fuel the company’s already meteoric growth rate. In December the privately held company, which does not publish detailed financial performance information, said it anticipated surpassing $3 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2024.

Recent published reports have said annual revenue could reach $4 billion by the end of this year with sales growth exceeding 40 percent this year and in 2026.

F5 Acquires MantisNet For Cloud-Native Observability, Security Push

Application delivery and security specialist F5 this week said it acquired MantisNet, a Reston, Va.-based provider of real-time network observability and network intelligence.

With the addition of MantisNet’s technology, telecom providers, as well as enterprise and government customers, will be able to monitor east–west traffic across cloud-native and 5G environments at scale and detect and respond to network-level issues and security threats in real time, according to Seattle-based F5.

With the deal now closed, MantisNet’s Extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF)-powered, agentless technology will be integrated into F5 ‘s flagship Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) for greater visibility into network traffic, while eliminating the need for more agents that consume resources and add operational complexity, F5 said.

The two companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.

Schneider Electric Provides Partners With ‘Gateway’ To Capture Infrastructure IT Spend

Schneider Electric is rolling out Gateway, a new benefit to help resellers and integration partners capture the massive spending that is headed towards data center and on-premises infrastructure as organizations build out IT capabilities needed for the AI era.

Schneider Electric’s Gateway offering gives partners access to training, free licenses and enablement for EcoStruxure IT, a cloud-based power assessment tool that’s designed to help partners connect with prospects and customers, Schneider Electric Vice President of U.S. Channels Gordon Lord told CRN.

Partners also will have access to Schneider Electric’s own in-house experts for support as well as license reimbursement at the higher levels of the company’s partner program.

Once partners sign up for Gateway, they can use EcoStruxure IT to run a full UPS Health Assessment that delivers an overall score with specific recommendations to optimize performance, identify outdated firmware and vulnerable configurations to improve security, quantify avoided downtime and actual downtime, and measure Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and power consumption to reduce costs and carbon footprint.

“The biggest thing we’re trying to do is this idea of engaging customers in a different way and helping our partners do that. What this does is it really starts to build pipeline for the partners,” said Lord. “Then we tie it in on the back end with program incentives. It’s not just a program that we’re bringing partners. It’s really a reason to call customers.”

Gateway also provides a path for partners to cross-sell their own value-added solutions, said Lord. “The managed service experts from the partner come in and utilize that as a foot-in-the-door to start talking about, ‘Boy, we can not only sell you the hardware, software and services here, but we could sell this as a managed service,’” Lord said. “So it’s a door-opener.”

Remediation Operations Startup Seemplicity Raises $50M In New Funding

Seemplicity, a fast-growing startup in the remediation operations space, raised $50 million in a successful Series B funding round, the company said this week.

The company said it will leverage the new funding to increase its investment in AI capabilities and fuel ongoing development of its product to make its capabilities “more usable and accessible for organizations of all sizes.”

The additional funding also will “support a rapid expansion” of its go-to-market strategy and be used to further scale its U.S. operations, expand its presence across the UK and Europe, and “drive revenue growth through new sales channels,” the company said.

The funding round was led by Sienna Venture Capital with participation from Essentia Venture Capital and existing investors Glilot Capital Partners, NTTVC and S Capital.

Seemplicity, founded in 2020 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, develops a remediation operations “exposure action” platform that’s used by IT operations, DevOps and cybersecurity teams to automate and streamline the entire vulnerability management and remediation process. The company’s U.S. operations are based in Palo Alto, Calif.

Net at Work Continues Acquisition Spree With AppSolute Buy

Returning to the topic of savvy acquisitions, solution provider Net at Work makes this week’s Came to Win list with its acquisition of fellow New York-based IT services firm AppSolute Consulting Group in a move that helps Net at Work grow its managed service offerings and expand its Sage and Acumatica application practices.

Net at Work, No. 246 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500, will take on all clients, employees and consultants associated with AppSolute, the company said in a statement this week. The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal.

AppSolute co-founders Bruce Baron and David Hoffman will join Net at Work as director of small and midsize business (SMB) products and services and overseeing the Sage 100 and Sage 300 practice, according to Net at Work.

“By joining forces, we can offer AppSolute clients, who have come to expect white-glove service from knowledgeable, trusted IT professionals, an opportunity to move forward with the same level of continued care from familiar team members,” Alex Solomon, co-president and co-founder of Net at Work, said in a statement. “They will gain access to Net at Work’s broader solutions portfolio and the strength of a larger team to help them achieve their business goals faster.”

The AppSolute acquisition comes just seven months after Net at Work bought the Sage and Acumatica businesses of Ohio-based reseller e2b Teknologies.