Carbonite raises $20 million

Online backup company closes mezzanine round to grow, expand, and build new products

Boston-based startup, Carbonite, has raised $20 million in new funding.  Crosslink Capital led the round.  All other existing investors, including Menlo Ventures, Performance Equity and Common Angels Fund also participated.  This brings the company to a total of $67 million in funding.  The company only disclosed, "the valuation of the mezzanine round is a major step up from previous rounds."

Carbonite provides online backup solutions for consumers and small businesses.  The company charges $54.95/year and gives its users unlimited backup capacity.  The whole thing functions pretty easily, as all a user has to do is install a small application which remotely backs up their computer to Carbonite's servers, essentially, cloud-based backup.  

The company says it has backed up more than 39 million files and restored more than 3.2 billion lost files for customers since it launched in 2006.  Today, Carbonite said it backs up more than 100 million files every day.  

CEO and Co-founder David Friend commented on the funding, "This investment enhances our ability to continue to lead innovation here in the US and to expand our offerings to new foreign markets."

What's interesting is one of Carbonite's competitors, Backblaze, isn't looking for funds, yet is growing at rate of half a petabyte of storage per month.  At the same time, Backblaze builds its own servers which it calls Storage Pods.  

Gary Hromadko, venture partner at Crosslink said, "Carbonite certainly didn't need to raise more cash at this point, but this is the kind of business and management team that Crosslink likes to be involved with, so we were very pleased to be able to make the investment."

Carbonite said it will use the funds to accelerate growth in the US, expand into new markets and introduce new products.

Check out Carbonite's company profile here on Vator.