Hyperscale networking software startup Arrcus Inc. today announced it has closed on a $50 million late-stage round of funding led by Prosperity7.

Existing investors, including Clear Ventures, General Catalyst, Liberty Global and Lightspeed, also participated in the Series D round, as did Silicon Valley Bank, which is providing credit facilities. Arrcus said today’s round almost doubles its valuation, but it didn’t provide any concrete numbers.

The startup is a developer of core, edge and multicloud network infrastructure called the Arrcus Connected Edge Platform that runs on white-box switches and routers in physical, virtual and cloud environments. It consists of a set of software modules that provide various management capabilities for coordinating network operations. These include a “hyper-performance resilient control plane” and application programming interfaces that enable companies to create automation workflows. The ACE Platform also features a telemetry tool that can collect detailed information about network activity for monitoring purposes.

The modules that make up ACE Platform are based on a microservices architecture similar to that of modern, container-based cloud applications. The main advantage is that users can restart a component for maintenance purposes without having to take the entire deployment offline, which reduces downtime.

With its platform, Arrcus is targeting the needs of next-generation networks that require high-bandwidth, secure-edge connectivity to handle applications such as low-latency content delivery, artificial intelligence processing and automation. Its main competitors include Cisco Systems Inc. and Juniper Networks Inc., as well as startups such as DriveNets Ltd.

International Data Corp. analyst Brad Casemore said a growing number of enterprises are looking to modernize their networks to achieve greater agility, flexibility, programmability and resilience, and that can only be done through software-defined automated network intelligence.

“The Arrcus Connected Edge platform has been designed with these capabilities in mind, addressing use cases that span the data center, core and edge, while providing operating efficiencies that allow customers to control infrastructure costs and accelerate the launch of revenue-generating network services,” he said.

Arrcus has not disclosed many customers, but it claims to serve enterprises in industry verticals such as retail, finance, software-as-a-service and telecommunications. The startup is said to be a leading player in the area of segment routing multiprotocol label switching and SR-v6, which is a new generation of routing technologies aimed at providing faster processing and better quality of service for edge networking.

“Leading global customers are making the shift to Arrcus’ disruptively innovative ACE platform for data center switching, 5G carrier routing and multicloud networking,” said Chief Executive Shekar Ayyar.

Arrcus offered a number of data points to demonstrate its strong performance over the last year, saying it saw a greater than 100% compound annual growth rate in bookings, as well as more than doubled customer expansion year-over-year. Those numbers point to a growing demand for Arrcus’ disaggregated switching and routing solutions, the company said. In addition, it reported a 70% increase in its global headcount.

The money from today’s round will be used to expand its teams, with the company looking to strengthen its engineering and research and development teams, in addition to expanding its global go-to-market presence.

Image: Arrcus