Acronis valued at $1bn after latest investment

Money will be used for M&A and to expand engineering teams

Data backup vendor Acronis has raised $147m (£118m) in its latest funding round, with its valuation now topping $1bn.

The round was led by Goldman Sachs and was the vendor's first in 15 years, since it raised $11m in 2004, according to Crunchbase.

The money will be used to build more datacentres, expand its engineering teams in Singapore, Bulgaria and Arizona and make acquisitions.

It also plans to use the investment to accelerate its business growth in North America with Acronis SCS, an independent software vendor and distributor for the public sector.

Acronis was founded in Singapore in 2003 and is headquartered in Switzerland. It has a headcount of 1,400 across 18 countries and works with 50,000 partners in over 150 countries.

"We are excited about Goldman Sachs' investment," said Serguei Beloussov, founder and CEO of Acronis.

"In 2018, Acronis achieved 20 per cent business growth, and in 2019 it is on track for over 30 per cent growth, with the Acronis Cyber Cloud business growing by over 100 per cent.

"Recently we announced the Acronis Cyber Platform, enabling third parties to customise, extend, and integrate our cyberprotection solutions to the needs of their customers and partners.

"The investment round led by Goldman Sachs will help us to fast-track the product development through acquisitions of companies and additional resources, and accelerate the growth."

Holger Staude, VP of GS Growth, stated: "We are excited to invest in Acronis at this stage of rapid growth.

"The traditional backup and data protection market is changing due to an innovative solution delivered efficiently by Acronis Cyber Protection through a vast channel of service providers."