The upstart has revealed a new $35 million funding round aimed at helping enterprises build and manage complex network infrastructure as AI fuels demand for new data centers and infrastructure that’s secure and can keep up.
NetBox Labs, the commercial steward of open-source network and infrastructure management stack NetBox, has revealed a $35 million funding round aimed at helping enterprises build and manage complex network infrastructure at a time in which AI is placing new burdens on existing infrastructure.
The latest Series B funding round was led by NGP Capital, with participation from Sorenson Capital and Headline. Existing investors also participated in the round, including Flybridge Capital, Notable Capital, Mango Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, and IBM, according to the New York City-based startup.
NetBox has a large community of contributors, partners, and technology integrations, according to the upstart, which is in the process of creating a channel program, the company said.
“As the adoption of network automation accelerates globally, NetBox Labs is building a channel program designed not just to scale sales—but to transform how partners deliver modern infrastructure management to their customers … Today, NetBox Labs’ customers and partners span the globe and have sourced, influenced, or resold more than 40 percent of our total revenue to date,” Bill Lapcevic, NetBox Labs’ CRO told CRN in an email.
[Related: Cisco, Pure Storage Invest In Nvidia-Backed Startup CoreWeave]
NetBox’s technology is helping enterprises build, manage and automate modern infrastructure to unlock AI use cases and guarantee adherence to critical performance and security standards, the company said.
NetBox said the new funding will go towards furthering its pace of innovation, help the upstart scale to meet global market demand, and hire across customer success, engineering, marketing, product, partnerships and sales.
“Every day, our partners play a critical role in helping enterprises modernize their networks and infrastructure with NetBox at the core,” said Kris Beevers, co-founder and CEO of NetBox Labs in an email to CRN. “NetBox is increasingly embedded in the reference architectures of the world’s most sophisticated systems integrators and resellers—trusted as foundational to modern networking, infrastructure, and security strategies. This new funding enables us to deliver even greater value to our partner ecosystem by accelerating innovation across NetBox, Discovery, Assurance, and our AI portfolio. We’re investing deeply in the tools, integrations, and global support that help our partners address more use cases, deliver faster outcomes, and drive long-term success for their enterprise customers.”
NetBox is already being used by Fortune 500 companies like J.P. Morgan and U.S. government teams to manage complex infrastructure. The company is also working with fellow upstarts, such as cloud AI player CoreWeave, which is becoming a major player in the AI industry as a top provider of Nvidia GPUs and cloud computing.
The startup is helping CoreWeave launch new AI data centers faster, NetBox said.
“We’re building dozens of new AI data centers every year, full of complex infrastructure,” said Jim Julson, head of network at CoreWeave, in a statement. “NetBox is crucial for accelerating our timelines with automation. Deploying our infrastructure even a month sooner as a result of these efficiencies directly impacts our revenue, and NetBox enables streamlined operations and automation once infrastructure is in production.”
Cisco Systems last week disclosed a $1.06 million share stake in CoreWeave. The startup, for its part, launched its initial public offering in late March at $40 per share. Its stock value is up more than 200 percent since then.
Market research firm IDC forecasts a 60 percent year-over-year increase in global AI spending in 2025, reaching $360 billion. What’s more, the United States leads in AI infrastructure spending, followed by China (PRC), Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan), and Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), according to IDC.
