Apptio, moving further down the path toward a possible IPO, today announced a $50 million funding round led by T. Rowe Price — a significant injection of capital for the Seattle-area company and one of the largest venture capital financings in the Pacific Northwest in the past five years.
The company, which offers on-demand software and services for managing corporate IT departments, counts companies including Bank of America, Boeing, Cisco, Microsoft, Facebook and JPMorgan Chase among its customers.
Apptio, headquartered in Bellevue, says it will use the $50 million Series D funding to continue investing in the development of its technology platform, grow its base of customers and “maintain its independence” in its segment of the market.
“We’re just thrilled that we’ve been led to this opportunity by keeping our ears open and listening to our customers,” said Kurt Shintaffer, the company’s co-founder and chief financial officer, in an interview. “We started the company simply by having conversations with people in enterprise IT and trying to learn what biggest problems needed solving. We haven’t stopped doing that, and we think it’s that type of behavior that has led to the success we’ve had.”
He added, “We’re grateful for all the people who have contributed to what’s been a great 4-and-a-half-year run, and we hope to be a much longer story.”
Apptio CEO Sunny Gupta, the company’s other co-founder, has said his goal is to build the next big enterprise software company in the Pacific Northwest.
“We are trying to build something of substantial scale,” Gupta said at a WTIA event last fall. “We run our business like we wanted to build a great product, a great market, a great new category as opposed to thinking about an exit.”
The financing brings the total amount raised by Apptio to $91 million. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Madrona Venture Group, and Shasta Ventures also participated in the new Series D round.
“Apptio has pioneered the creation of a new enterprise SaaS category for CIOs that enables them to manage the business of technology and clearly communicate its value to the enterprise,” said John O’Farrell, general partner for Andreessen Horowitz, in a news release. “This is a winning team that knows how to execute at scale. We are delighted to be participating in this latest funding round.”
Gupta said in October that the company was on course for bookings of $50 to $60 million in 2011.
