LucidLink Corp., the developer of a speedy file sharing platform optimized for large datasets, today announced that it has raised $75 million in funding. 

The Series C round was led by Brighton Park Capital. Adobe Inc.’s venture capital arm, Headline, Baseline Ventures and a number of other institutional backers participated as well. The raise follows two years in which LucidLink claims to have quadrupled its annual recurring revenue. 

Professionals in fields such as architecture and graphic design often have to share large files with team members. A set of building blueprints, for example, can require up to several gigabytes of storage space in some cases. Such records are difficult to distribute among colleagues using traditional cloud-based file sharing platforms.

File sharing platforms typically require users to download records onto their local machines before editing them. If a dataset takes up several gigabytes of space, the download can take hours. Moreover, any edits that users make to a file must be synced back to the cloud, a process that likewise requires a significant amount of time. 

LucidLink is working to speed up the workflow. The company offers a file sharing platform, Filespaces, that promises to let workers access their teams’ cloud-based data 100 times faster than competing services. Moreover, it reduces shared datasets’ storage space and bandwidth requirements.

Filespaces can store files in the cloud or on a company’s on-premises infrastructure. It breaks up each file into multiple parts dubbed objects. When workers wish to edit a file, the platform doesn’t fetch the entire file but rather only the parts that will be actively used, which significantly speeds up download times.

For added measure, Filespaces caches the most frequently used records on users’ local machines. This removes the need for applications to fetch the records from the cloud, which further speeds up the loading process. Changes that users make to locally cached data are automatically synced back to the cloud-based LucidLink environment where their team keeps shared records. 

“Legacy collaboration and storage solutions are not designed for this new hybrid workplace reality, and LucidLink is becoming the go-to solution for companies looking to future-proof their businesses,” said LucidLink co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Peter Thompson. “Our customers are reaching 5x in productivity gains on previously impossible workflows.”

According to the company, an added benefit of its platform is that it removes the need for storage gateways. Those are on-premises servers used to manage the task of moving data from a cloud-based file sharing platform to users’ computers and vice versa. Typically, gateways also hold a local cache of frequently used records to speed up data access.

LucidLink allows customers to encrypt the data they store in its platform using their own encryption keys. Meanwhile, a built-in backup tool can create copies of that data every few minutes to reduce the risk posed by outages. Backups created by the tool are immutable, which means they can’t be deleted or encrypted by any ransomware that might find its way into a company’s file sharing environment. 

The company says that its platform manages more than one billion files for Adobe, Shopify Inc., Spotify AB and thousands of other customers. It will use the proceeds from its newly announced $75 million funding round to further grow its installed base. As part of the effort, LucidLink plans to expand into new markets and accelerate product development initiatives.

Image: LucidLink