Storage-server mash-up company Nutanix reels in $140M ahead of its IPO

Nutanix, a startup with data center hardware that marries servers and storage, has picked up a hefty supply of new capital to work with.

The new $140 million round Nutanix announced today comes just seven months after landing $101 million. This money will go toward research and development, sales, marketing, and support.

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With the new funding, Nutanix carries a valuation exceeding $2 billion, according to a statement. An initial public offering could be just a few quarters away.

One reason investors jump at the Nutanix technology: It can save companies money. By mashing together server and storage infrastructure into each box, Nutanix provides gear that can lead to hardware consolidation. Software that runs on the boxes can handle disaster recovery, deduplication, and other features.

Companies like Pivot3, Scale Computing, and SimpliVity also sell such hardware, but Nutanix has captured the leadership position among the startup category. Meanwhile, this week VMware announced hardware that aggregates storage and compute components.

Nutanix supports a range of hypervisor software for create virtual machines that can each run applications.

And recently it partnered with hardware seller Dell, providing the software for Dell-branded converged-infrastructure boxes. One key feature Nutanix touted at the time of the announcement was the ability to use multiple hypervisors in the same environment.

Nutanix started in 2009 and is based in San Jose. The company claims more than 800 customers (up from 500 in January), including Honda, Toyota, the U.S. Department of Justice, and Yahoo Japan.

To date, Nutanix has raised $312 million. The company didn’t disclose the names of the investors leading the new round, only describing them in a statement today as “two premier Boston-based public market investors with over $3 trillion in combined assets under management.”