John Chambers’ Networking Startup Nile Nails Down $175M

Enterprise networking can be a hard sector for a startup to break into, as it has long been dominated by tech giants.

That has not deterred San Jose, California-based networking startup Nile, which announced a large $175 million Series C less than a year after emerging from stealth. The company was co-founded by former Cisco Systems executives John Chambers and Pankaj Patel. Chambers served as CEO of the networking giant for two decades.

The round was co-led by March Capital and Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund Sanabil Investments. It also included strategic participation from Prosperity7 — the venture capital fund of Saudi Arabia-based Aramco Ventures — and Liberty Global Ventures. 8VC 1, Geodesic Capital, U First Capital and Valor Equity Partners also contributed.

Simplifying and securing the network

Nile is attempting to disrupt the networking industry by offering network-as-a-service with more secure wired and wireless services enhanced with monitoring, analytics and automation.

The idea is to help companies simplify their modern networking needs and offer optimum security while going head-to-head with goliaths such as Cisco and Juniper Networks.

“Nile is in a strong position to take advantage of several paradigm shifts occurring across the technology ecosystem,” said Patel, mentioning cloud-born edge infrastructure, AI and cloud migration strategies in particular.

“These trends present unique challenges in the way enterprise infrastructure is consumed, and Nile is committed to addressing them head-on, making our service as agile and innovative as the technology solutions it enables,” he added.

Nile already has expanded into Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and collaborates with more than 100 channel- and service-provider partners.

The startup did not offer a valuation. The round brings Nile’s total amount of capital raised to $300 million since being founded in 2018, per the company.

Illustration: Dom Guzman