SA国际传媒

has it is buying network intelligence startup , which has raised more than $110 million in funding, according to SA国际传媒

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While the San Jose, California-based tech giant did not disclose how much it is paying for the company, at 鈥渁bout $1 billion.鈥�

San Francisco-based ThousandEyes describes itself as 鈥淕oogle Maps for the Internet.鈥�

The startup aims to help IT teams see what鈥檚 braking or slowing down the paths that their websites, applications or services take to get to their end users, so they can either reroute or get the problem fixed before it impacts their customers.

鈥淲henever a SaaS application or service goes down or slows down, every minute counts for IT teams to figure out what鈥檚 going on before customers start complaining, or worse, going to a competitive service,鈥� ThousandEyes CEO and co-founder , wrote me via email in 2019. 鈥淭housandEyes helps IT teams 鈥榮ee鈥� into the Internet and cloud to identify the problem immediately, meaning they鈥檙e spending their time getting the issue fixed, rather than spending time trying to find what鈥檚 wrong.鈥�

Its customers span a variety of industries and include , , , Box, and .

One has to wonder how much the COVID-19 pandemic had to do with this acquisition. In a , Cisco鈥檚 Senior Vice President and General Manager Todd Nightingale wrote: 鈥淭housandEyes provides Internet intelligence at a scale and accuracy never seen before. In a time when every meeting is held and every document is shared through connected applications, the need for ThousandEyes technology has never been so high.鈥�

In a statement, Cisco said it will incorporate ThousandEyes鈥� capabilities across its core Enterprise Networking and Cloud, and AppDynamics portfolios 鈥渢o enhance visibility across the enterprise, internet and the cloud.鈥�

Funding history

In February 2019, I covered ThousandEyes鈥� $50 million Series D round that nearly doubled the amount of funding it had received since it was founded in 2010. That money was raised at a $620 million valuation.

(formerly Google Ventures) led the round, which also included participation from , , and . Prior to that, its last raise had taken place in 2016, a led by Tenaya Capital.

As of February 2019, the company had more than 250 employees spread across its home base of San Francisco and offices in London, Austin, New York and Tokyo. Today, it is estimated to have around 400 employees.

In a , ThousandEyes鈥� co-founder Lad wrote that ThousandEyes 鈥渘ever had an exit strategy鈥� and that he used to say his exit strategy is 鈥渢o not have one鈥�

鈥淪o our strategy has been to keep growing and to make decisions that were healthy for the long term,鈥� he wrote. 鈥淲hile some folks may argue that this is an exit, it鈥檚 not in my mind. We decided to become part of Cisco because we saw the potential to do much more, much faster, and truly create a legacy for ThousandEyes.鈥�

Today, Thomvest Ventures’ Partner Umesh Padval told me that his firm was “absolutely thrilled to be part of the Thousand Eyes family led by Mohit Lad, a first time CEO and founder after he graduated from UCLA.”

“His story on how he built this company out of college and how scrappy he was on engaging and winning major customers with research grants should be a learning curve for many entrepreneurs around the world,” Padval said.

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