FTVentures, Presidio Venture Partners and Ignition Partners Back Cloudmark’s Expansion Plans, as the Company Drives to Profitability This Year
San Francisco, CA – Cloudmark Inc., the company that delivers the immune system for email, today announced that it received $11 million in its final round of funding from FTVentures, Presidio Venture Partners, a Sumitomo Corporation company, and its major initial investor, Ignition Partners. This investment will strengthen Cloudmark’s already solid financial position, enabling the company to further fund research and development and expand its ability to meet the growing worldwide demand for innovative e-mail security solutions among enterprise, service provider, small business and consumer markets.
“Cloudmark is solving a real-life problem that plagues corporations around the world,” said Ben Cukier, Principal of FTVentures. “Its award-winning anti-spam product and its anti-fraud solution are the most innovative and effective technologies we have seen. We know from our limited partners, who are 38 of the world’s largest financial institutions, how damaging this problem can be to a company and its customers, so we looked for the best technology and management team for a solution. Cloudmark is the answer.”
“This is a significant endorsement of our business model and technology advantage from world-class financial institutions and multinational corporations,” said Karl Jacob, CEO, Cloudmark.
Cloudmark customers include more than 1200 corporations with leaders such as Covad, Credit Suisse, American Century Investments, the US Department of Justice and the US Government Services Agency. FTVentures’ support will further solidify Cloudmark’s presence with financial service companies and enterprises around the globe, helping them detect and block message abuse such as spam and the ever-growing threat of phishing.
Presidio Venture Partners also participated in the investment, supporting Cloudmark’s global expansion and leading edge technology.
“Cloudmark’s unique approach provides the highest accuracy, the lowest cost of ownership, and the greatest global effectiveness,” stated Kai Imoto, executive vice president of Presidio Venture Partners. “We use very stringent evaluation criteria and were extremely impressed with Cloudmark’s ability to meet the challenging needs of Sumitomo’s most important customers worldwide.”
The deal will include support from Sumitomo’s global network of technology partners and System Integrators, which service some of the world’s largest corporations in Japan, Asia and around the world.
FTVentures’ Principals Eric Byunn and Ben Cukier will join Cloudmark’s Board of Directors as a result of this financing, bringing with them a wealth of operational and financial services industry experience.
About FTVentures
FTVentures (www.ftventures.com) is a private equity firm providing venture through late stage growth capital to software and business services companies. The firm’s unmatched global financial services partner network-including nine of the top ten U.S. banks-provides FTVentures with a unique vantage point into the business-driven IT and operating challenges of global enterprises. FTVentures leverages insights from these connections as it identifies, analyzes and invests in software and business services companies. Founded in 1998, FTVentures currently has $623 million under management and is an active equity investor in privately held software and services companies focused on organic growth, as well as in companies pursuing build-outs, recapitalizations and spin-out ventures. The firm has offices in San Francisco and New York.
About Presidio Venture Partners, LLC
Presidio Venture Partners, LLC is a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley that invests in Information Technology (IT). Backed by Sumitomo Corporation, one of the world’s leading integrated trading and investment firms, Presidio acts as the early-mid stage IT investment vehicle for Sumitomo Corporation and its affiliates. As a strategic investor, Presidio helps its portfolio companies establish global connections through the family of companies owned, operated and managed by Sumitomo Corporation. Presidio’s access to the Japanese and global IT markets extends beyond Sumitomo and its affiliates to the Global 1000 companies that are actively engaged with the Sumitomo Network.
About Ignition Partners
Ignition Partners, (www.ignitionpartners.com), headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., is a premier venture capital firm focused on early stage computing, network infrastructure and telecommunications startups in the Western United States. Ignition brings together an unparalleled combination of domain focus, technical expertise and operational experience. Ignition’s partners are proven business leaders with more than 160 years of combined experience, who have built some of the world’s most successful businesses of the last two decades, including Microsoft Windows, McCaw Cellular Communications, AT&T Wireless and Microsoft’s enterprise business. The VC’s founders are also credited with leading Microsoft’s Internet turnaround.
About Cloudmark, Inc.
Cloudmark is the company that delivers the immune system for email. The company offers tailored anti-spam and anti-fraud solutions for the individual user, small and medium businesses (SMBs) large enterprises and service providers providing immediate relief to thousands of businesses and more than a million individuals in 72 countries.
Cloudmark invented the highly effective spamDNA technology, the recent innovation of Email Genetic Mapping coupled with Cloudmark’s revolutionary nDimensional technology and the first peer-to-peer, real-time, SpamFighting community in 1998.
CTO Jordan Ritter, also co-founder of Napster, and Vipul Ved Prakash, chief scientist and author of Vipul’s Razor founded Cloudmark.
For more information about Cloudmark, visit the company’s web site at:http://www.cloudmark.com/.
Cloudmark, the Cloudmark logo, Email Genetic Map (EGM) and Email Genetic Mapping are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cloudmark Inc., for use in the United States and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Contacts
Sue Ellen Schaming
BLANC & OTUS PUBLIC RELATIONS
415-856-5129
sschaming@blancandotus.com
Kim Kellogg
PR MANAGER, FTVENTURES
415-229-3000
info@ftventures.com
