Nginx (pronounced “engine-x”), a US-based open source web server publisher with Russian origins, has secured $20 million in a Series B1 round of financing from New Enterprise Associates (NEA). German-American fund e.ventures, Moscow-based Runa Capital, Index Ventures and Nginx CEO Gus Robertson also took part in the round, the company announced.
Funding will be used for product development, driving a stronger community, marketing, and geographic expansion outside the US market.
Citing W3Techs data, Ngnix claims its servers are used “with blazing responsiveness” by 25.3% of the top million busiest websites – and by 40% of the world’s busiest 10,000 and 1,000 websites categories.
Beyond providing commercial support for its core (open-source) web server, Nginx sells a commercial version that can balance web requests across physical servers, deliver websites faster, and stream multimedia content, notes VentureBeat.
Over time, Nginx could pose a challenge to providers of hardware for accelerating the delivery of websites, like Citrix and F5, especially considering that the startup has a large base of open-source users, the US tech blog believes.
Nginx’s founder, Igor Sysoev, is a former system administrator at Rambler, a pioneer Russian web company. He 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 in August 2011. The startup, founded in Moscow, is now headquartered in San Francisco.
The company had already raised $10 million in October 2013 from NEA with the participation of its earlier investors.
Ngnix’s Series A round took place in October 2011 with $3 million raised from e.ventures, Moscow-based Runa Capital, and US fund MDS Capital.
