StackPath Edge Computing Platform Receives Investment From Juniper Networks & Cox Communications

With $396 Million in Total Funding, StackPath and Its Strategic Investors Aim to Define and Accelerate the Emergence of “Edge”

StackPath, LLC, the emerging leader in edge computing, announced that Juniper Networks, Inc. and Cox Communications Inc. have led a Series B round of equity financing for the company. This brings the total amount of equity raised by StackPath to $396 million, including an earlier Series A round led by Abry Partners. The additional capital will accelerate the growth of StackPath’s product development, engineering and go-to-market activities.

Barclays Capital Inc. and PJ Solomon served as lead placement agents to StackPath on the Series B investment. Barclays Capital Inc., PJ Solomon and DH Capital acted as financial advisors and DLA Piper acted as legal advisor to StackPath.

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Kevin Hutchins, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development for Juniper Networks, and Sujata Gosalia, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for Cox Communications, have joined StackPath’s board of directors.

“We are so excited to have Juniper and Cox join us in setting the direction and turbocharging the success of StackPath,” said Wen Temitim, Chief Technology Officer for StackPath. “We’ve laid the technology and operational foundation for StackPath to be the default edge-computing platform. Juniper and Cox join us at the beginning of the next phase of our strategy—which is to deliver more on our foundation and move it even closer to end users and devices.”

“Edge computing brings an evolution of network security and performance to the cable industry. It will give our residential and business customers access to the next generation of connected services and experiences by bringing valuable processing power closer,” said Ms. Gosalia. “Cox continues to invest in companies and technologies like StackPath that enhance network performance and improve the experience for our broadband customers.”

“When Juniper began working with StackPath on its infrastructure needs, we were blown away by how well their vision maps to our own. Further, we found that StackPath is one of the only companies that has a scalable, high-performance edge cloud already running in the market with mission-critical customer workloads. Edge computing and edge-cloud functionality are critical as enterprises, service providers and cloud providers transform in the cloud era. In this new world, applications are increasingly dependent upon the network. The transformation of the edge complements the cloud and on-premise solutions to ensure cost-effective performance, global scale, security and high quality of experience for mission critical applications including next-generation content delivery, interactive gaming, data management, analytics, IoT and 5G, among many others,” said Mr. Hutchins. “The edge will be a critical dimension of every service provider and enterprise operation. We are committed to helping our customers leverage the edge with solutions that will scale, grow and deliver increasing value.”

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True Edge Computing Today

While buzz around edge computing has grown rapidly, actual solutions have been slower to materialize. But StackPath currently delivers real edge compute products including virtual machines (VMs), containers and serverless, as well as edge services products such as content delivery network (CDN), web application firewall (WAF), managed DNS, service monitoring and DDoS protection.

All StackPath services can be delivered and scaled in any StackPath location, which are geographically closer to more end users and devices than traditional public cloud data centers. This gives developers and enterprises the building blocks, tools and proximity essential for cloud-centric workloads requiring ultra-low network latency and exceptional security. StackPath edge compute can connect to end users up to 2.6x faster than competing cloud compute provided by public core cloud providers.

Emerging from stealth in 2016, StackPath has already built a diverse customer base that includes Fortune 500 enterprises, as well as individual developers in industries ranging from digital media and digital gaming to advertising technology, software development and e-commerce.

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Age of Edge

Gartner Research projects that throughout 2020, organizations will continue to accelerate the digital business era as the internet becomes executable. A secured, decentralized world of distributed networks and applications will usher in the opportunity age. In the next few years, more than three billion new customers are expected to enter the commercial life cycle for the first time.*

The rapid growth of edge is due, in part, to the advent of 5G digital cellular networks. 5G stands to reduce wireless network latency up to 10x and increase volume capacity by a predicted 40% per user over 4G. This provides the levels of throughput necessary for commercial applications of promising technologies such as autonomous devices (including driving, delivery drones and robotics), haptics-enabled web interfaces and even extended reality (a unified application of augmented reality and virtual reality). These applications require processing power and other computing at the first network hop. The edge is imperative as 5G performance gains are diluted if data moves from client to cloud and then has to travel distances within the cloud before being processed.

“It’s impossible to imagine how diverse the applications of edge computing will be. Until now, the edge was home only to managed services—having compute at the edge completely changes the game,” continued Temitim. “We are already working with customers in virtually every industry vertical. Digital audio and video and gaming companies, in particular, have found it extremely straightforward to leverage our capabilities.”

“The difference between winning and losing a game can be milliseconds–latency really matters–but right now the internet doesn’t care about games, so players get an inconsistent experience from one game to the next,” said Glenn Fiedler, CEO of Network Next. “At Network Next, we’re making the internet better for games by reducing latency, packet loss and jitter using StackPath’s edge compute offering.”

“People are passionate about watching live sports and fans should be able to really engage when watching the top sporting action from around the world. That’s why we are building the world’s largest and fastest growing sports streaming service and that is why we are doing it with the help of companies like StackPath,” said Robin Oakley, Head of Distribution Technology at DAZN. “StackPath helps us deliver our live content to our subscribers wherever they are around the world.”

“Our video platform makes it possible for any publisher to stream video at the same quality as Netflix or YouTube. StackPath is critical for us to accomplish this,” shared Adam Brown, Co-Founder of Mux. “As a graduate of StackPath’s Propel startup program, we are happy to see StackPath grow and scale as we do the same.”

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