Nutanix, Inc. is an American cloud computing company that sells software, cloud services (such as desktops as a service, disaster recovery as a service, and cloud monitoring), and

software-defined storage Software-defined storage (SDS) is a marketing term for computer data storage software for policy-based provisioning and management of data storage independent of the underlying hardware. Software-defined storage typically includes a form of storag ...

History

Nutanix was founded on September 23, 2009 by Dheeraj Pandey,

Mohit Aron Mohit Aron (born 1973), is an Indian-American computer scientist, businessman and entrepreneur. Life Aron was born about 1973 and grew up in Chandigarh. He graduated with a bachelor of technology in computer science from the Indian Institute o ...

and Ajeet Singh. In early 2013 Aron left Nutanix to start

Cohesity Cohesity is an American privately held information technology company headquartered in San Jose, California with offices in India and Ireland. The company develops software that allows IT professionals to backup, manage and gain insights from t ...

, a privately held

computer data storage Computer data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and Data storage, recording media that are used to retain digital data (computing), data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers. The central pro ...

company.

Venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

firms invested $312.2 million over five rounds of funding in Nutanix. The company reached a $1 billion valuation by 2013, which made it known as a " unicorn startup". It raised $140 million in a Series E round of financing in 2014, valuing the company at approximately $2 billion. Nutanix's backers included

Lightspeed Venture Partners Lightspeed Venture Partners is a global venture capital firm focusing on multi-stage investments in the enterprise, consumer, and health sectors. Lightspeed invests in seed, early and growth-stage companies. The company invests in the U.S. and a ...

Khosla Ventures Khosla Ventures is an American venture capital firm founded by Vinod Khosla, focused on early-stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, financial services, agriculture, healthcare and clean technology sectors. Some of its most successf ...

, and

Blumberg Capital Blumberg Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm that partners with entrepreneurs to innovate and build technology companies. The firm specializes in leading Seed and Series A rounds collaborating with angel investors, other venture capital ...

. Nutanix filed for an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

(IPO) in December 2015, reporting a net loss in its fiscal year ending July 2015 of $126 million. In August 2016, Nutanix announced it had acquired PernixData. The IPO on September 30, 2016, raised about $230 million after selling 14.87 million shares at a price of $16. This was the biggest VC-backed IPO of 2016 in the U.S. Analysts expected Nutanix's public offering would be delayed. In May 2017, Nutanix partnered with IBM to create a series of data center hardware using IBM Power Systems for business apps. In March 2018, Nutanix announced the acquisition of Minjar, based in

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

. Later the same year, Nutanix acquired the DaaS startup Frame. On June 1, 2019, Nutanix appointed Brian Stevens to its board of directors. In March 2020, Sohaib Abbasi joined the company's board of directors. Due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, Nutanix announced a furlough impacting about 1,500 employees in April 2020. In June 2020, Nutanix added Virginia Gambale to its board of directors. In December, 2020, Pandey was replaced as chief executive by Rajiv Ramaswami, who had been the chief operating officer at

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

. VMware filed a lawsuit, alleging a conflict of interest, but dropped the legal fight a year later. In 2021, the company transitioned from making hardware appliances to focusing on subscription software. In 2022, MinIO alleged that Nutanix had been violating MinIO's free software license for the past three years, with good faith negotiations over the matter breaking down and Nutanix' license being revoked as a consequence.

Acquisitions

Operations

Nutanix combines storage,

computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, e ...

, and

virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...

. The company's software product families include Acropolis, Prism, Era, Frame, and Files. In 2015, Nutanix was reported to have built a Linux KVM based

hypervisor A hypervisor (also known as a virtual machine monitor, VMM, or virtualizer) is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is calle ...

, called AHV (Acropolis HyperVisor) in order to make managing computer infrastructure easier. Nutanix marketed its products as "

hyper-converged infrastructure Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is a software-defined IT infrastructure that virtualizes all of the elements of conventional " hardware-defined" systems. HCI includes, at a minimum, virtualized computing (a hypervisor), software-defined ...

". In 2020, the company shifted to a

subscription business model The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, an ...

References

{{Cloud computing Software companies established in 2009 Cloud storage Companies listed on the Nasdaq 2016 initial public offerings 2009 establishments in California