Rubrik raises unicorn round with Bain Capital backing

Bain Capital Ventures has led a $261 million Series E investment in Rubrik, valuing the creator of data management software at $3.3 billion. Lightspeed, Greylock Partners,Khosla Ventures and IVP also participated in the round, which brings Rubrik’s total backing to $553 million. The Bay Area startup previously raised $180 million at a $1.3 billion valuation in 2017, which followed a $61 million round at a $610 million figure in 2016. 

This is the first time Bain Capital’s VC arm has backed Rubrik, which uses the cloud to manage and secure data for clients including Cisco and the US Department of Defense. The deal is part of a years-long trend that’s seen Bain Capital Ventures complete more and more new VC investments, gradually raising its tally from 18 in 2011 to 41 last year, per the PitchBook Platform. 

The firm has also begun building a record of successful unicorn exits in recent years. In 2015, Bain Capital Ventures co-led a $303 million investment in DocuSign at a $3.1 billion valuation; last year, the electronic signature specialist went public with an initial market cap of $4.4 billion. The firm also backed ecommerce company Jet at a $150 million valuation in 2014, two years before it sold to Walmart for $3.3 billion.   

Dating back to the start of 2010, almost two-thirds of Bain Capital Ventures’ deals have occurred in the IT sector, again per PitchBook data. The firm invests almost exclusively in the US, conducting more than 40% of its activity on the West Coast—as one might expect for a firm so focused on tech.  

Just like in the broader IT and software industries, the number of VC investments in Rubrik’s sector of network management software ticked down during 2018 in the US, while the value of those deals picked up. A series of other companies in the space raised cash at unicorn valuation last year, including a quartet of fellow startups based within 40 miles of Rubrik’s Palo Alto home. That list: CrowdStrike, JFrog, Netskope and Tanium.