Content delivery network startup Fastly Inc. today said it has raised a late-stage funding round of $40 million as it heads to a likely initial public offering next year.

The Series F round was led by Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners and included Sozo Ventures, Swisscom Ventures and unnamed existing investors. The money is planned to be used to allow Fastly “to continue expanding its edge cloud services for leading digital publishing, e-commerce, and streaming companies, as well as explore the increasing market demand across financial services, healthcare and connected vehicles and devices.”

Founded in 2011, Fastly claims to be the only content delivery network that gives businesses complete control over how they serve content, access to real-time performance analytics and the ability to cache frequently changing content at the edge.

As noted when Fastly last raised funding in May 2017, its investors are banking that Fastly can outmaneuver the better-established players in the content delivery market with its “edge cloud platform.” That service is said to implement the same basic principles as the competition, allowing companies to store copies of website content around the world for faster loading, but sets itself apart with several features designed to streamline operations.

One of the company’s biggest selling points is an application programming interface that provides fine-grained control over how content is delivered, allowing companies to build their web services to make adjustments automatically through the API in response to certain events. In one example, a retailer could set up cached copies of its online storefront that are refreshed when a new promotion is available to prevent users from loading an old version and missing out.

Including the new funding, Fastly has raised $219 million to date. The funding is likely Fastly’s last round prior to the company going public. Although late-stage startup funding is not uncommon in 2018, the company’s investors will be looking at an exit given that Fastly is now seven years old with a pile of funding under its belt.

It doesn’t reveal its financials, but the company claims to have reached a $100 million revenue run rate in 2017. If and when it does decide to go public, Fastly will join a surge described by some as the biggest since the dot-com era. A long list of older tech startups are finally listing on public markets including Dropbox Inc., Pivotal Software Inc. and Zscaler Inc.

Photo: Fastly