Frederick, Md.-based cloud data infrastructure startup Fugue has picked up about $41 million in a new funding round. The Series D round was led by Washington, D.C.-based New Enterprise Associatesand included investment from the Maryland Venture Fund, a previous investor, the Future Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Australia.
"We met Future Fund through [NEA general partner who recently passed away] Harry Weller," Fugue CEO Josh Stella told DC Inno in an interview. "We had a great conversation about what we are doing and they were very enthusiastic about investing. I've yet to spend lot of time on the road raising money so far."
The new funding brings Fugue's total investment to $75 million, having raised $20 million a year ago in a round also led by NEA. That was also when Fugue rolled out its eponymous product and changed its name from Luminal to match the name of its central product. The basic version of that cloud infrastructure product is free, but Fugue is now prepping the debut of a new version for enterprise clients that can automate cloud services and offer secure support while still making sure that the client stays in the bounds of regulations.
"The funding is really to continue and expand what we do and to continue to grow the product with new features," Stella said. "We want to grow our go-to-market and client base. We have a pretty diverse list of clients but some are more interested in what we offer like financial services and healthcare. For industries that are heavily regulated, having compliance built in very compelling. We have government agencies using [Fugue] for that reason."
Keeping up with so many kinds of clients with so many different needs is the trick to Fugue's success, Stella explained. Creating a platform, rather than a straight-up product, leaves room for change, sometimes very quick change, a key ingredient to a laundry list of Silicon Valley and other tech companies.
"Fugue is designed to go to wherever the innovation cycle takes us."
"Fugue is designed to go to wherever the innovation cycle takes us," Stella said. "We see a lot of people who sound like they're starting to understand what Fugue is and to head in that direction, but our main competition is whether the potential clients decide the internal devops should build their own solution."
Stella isn't too worried about that potential crimp in his company's plans though. Companies have far too much else going on to make copying what Fugue does a prudent use of resources. Plus, the model that Fugue created, which can adapt to changing needs and technological circumstances, makes it much more flexible and useful in the long-term than most potential internal creations. Fittingly, that describes the name of the company and its product too.
"A fugue is where you take relatively simple phrases and combine and evolve them into beautiful, complex music," Stella said. "We do something like that, on similar lines but scale it to the cloud."
