Nerdio Enters Unicorn Territory Following Successful $500 Million Funding Round

Tech startup Nerdio has raised $500 million in a Series C funding round led by private equity investors, TechCrunch has reported. The startup, which simplifies how businesses deploy and manage Microsoft cloud technologies, says the latest Nerdio funding round has quadrupled its valuation since the time it conducted a Series B round of funding two years ago.

Unicorn Territory

With the latest Nerdio Series C investment, the company has now entered unicorn territory. Nerdio is a spin off of a company called Adar, a private equity firm which offers IT-a-service products. The startup separated from Adar back in 2020 after which it forged its own path as a dedicated cloud management service provider for big clients like Sony, PayPal, and Comcast.

“We are not disclosing the specific valuation, but it is north of $1 billion,” Nerdio’s Chief Revenue Officer Joseph Landes said in an email.

Nerdio targets customers who seek to optimize the cost and deployment of their cloud infrastructure. The company offers an Enterprise service suite that helps companies to manage virtual desktops on Microsoft Azure cloud platforms and Windows applications throughout their workforce.

“Nerdio was based on the premise that MSPs were looking to build cloud practices in Azure, but they didn’t have the expertise to do that. So we started a whole company to help abstract the complexity of Azure and to help MSPs build successful cloud practices there,” Landes said.

Nerdio also automates numerous tasks relating to the management of virtual desktops and cloud infrastructure. These include app deployment, user provisioning, cost optimization through features such as auto-scaling resources in line with demand.

Big Capital Backing

Prior to the current Series C funding round, Nerdio ran a Series A funding round in 2020. The company raised $8 million from investors at that time. In 2023, Nerdio’s Series B funding round raised $117 million. The latest round of funding attracted growth equity firm General Atlantic, Stepstone, and Lead Edge Capital, who purchased a minority stake in the tech company.

“Nerdio is enabling the transition of virtualization to the cloud and is delivering immediate and measurable value to organizations struggling with cloud complexity. The team’s ability to combine technical innovation with ease of use has resulted in remarkable customer loyalty and growth,” General Atlantic Managing Director and Enterprise Head Aaron Goldman said.

As part of its investment in Nerdio, General Atlantic is set to take up two spots on the startup’s board of directors. Nerdio is yet to make public the ownership structure across its diverse investors. However, the company said that its founders still hold a significant stake in the firm.

The company will use the $500 million raised in the new round of funding on Nerdio product expansion across leading Microsoft services. These include enhancing Nerdio Microsoft cloud technologies on Microsoft 365, Windows 365, and Azure Virtual Desktop. Nerdio also plans to expand its workforce which currently stands at 300 employees.
“We plan to grow that number significantly as we scale our global presence and build customer support and engineering teams,” Landes said.

Pertinent Services

Nerdio says that it adopts a modern cloud-native approach to conventional legacy players like Citrix that were initiated way before cloud computing came into existence.

At a time when millions of companies have adopted hybrid and remote working environments, its services are pertinent because they allow people to access virtual work environments securely from any location.

“Managing cloud environments is complex and costly — it typically requires a lot of specialized technical expertise and a mix of costly, siloed tools. Nerdio provides a single, comprehensive platform that allows organizations to manage their Microsoft cloud environments without the need for extra skills, tools, or workflows,” Landes said.

Virtual desktops are computing environments that operate on remote servers as opposed to physical computers. They allow users to access their files, configurations, and even applications through the internet on different devices.