Nginx, the open source web server publisher (pronounced “engine-x”), has just closed a $3 million round of financing from Russian early stage venture fund Runa Capital, US fund MDS Capital and US-German fund BV Capital-eVenture Capital.
The funds raised will be used to “establish a commercial offering that creates new infrastructure solutions for Internet companies in a variety of markets; including enterprise, CDN, hosting and cloud service providers, media and entertainment and more,” Nginx founder Igor Sysoev said.
“We’ll do our best to help Nginx develop its strategy and create new products,” Runa PR Director Maria said in an exchange with East-West Digital News.
Sysoev, a former system administrator at Rambler, a pioneer Russian web company, initially released his server software in 2004 and has been developing his web server solution since that time. Nginx was formally incorporated as a company only in August 2011. The startup, headquartered in Moscow, is planning to open a representative office in San Francisco soon.
Nginx products are designed to meet the needs of large scale, fast paced, content heavy web sites, according to the company’s website. Its web servers are used by 20% of the top 1000 sites in the world, in Facebook, Groupon, Hulu, Intel, and Yandex.
In early October, Nginx was serving more than 43 million websites – an 8.54% marketshare behind Apache and Microsoft – according to UK Internet security and research company Netcraft.
Founded in mid-2010, Runa manages $75 million in capital and share assets. This year, the fund has invested in Metabar, a Russian startup offering customizable toolbars, in Travelmenu, a Russian-Ukrainian site offering a suite of travel products, and in US SaaS provider BigTime. The fund also invests in residents of Skolkovo, the state-sponsored innovation hub currently under construction near Moscow.
