Pax8 Notches $185M to Expand SMB Tech Platform

Cloud commerce marketplace Pax8 brought in $185 million in a funding round that raises the company’s valuation to $1.7 billion, according to a Monday (April 11) press release.

New investor SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led Pax8’s funding effort with participation from existing investors Catalyst Investors, Sageview Capital, Blue Cloud Ventures and Liberty Global Ventures. Kristin Bannon, investment director at SoftBank Investment Advisers, will join the Pax8 board of directors.

“Through its marketplace, Pax8 is empowering SMBs with technology solutions they would otherwise not have access to while simultaneously granting software vendors distribution capabilities to a hard-to-reach customer segment,” Bannon said in the press release.

“I am thrilled to join the Pax8 Board and partner with the company on its hyper-growth technology strategy for the platform and cloud marketplace, and new opportunities for the company and its ecosystem of partners,” she said.

Pax8 has more than 200,000 business clients and 20,000 managed services partners. The platform simplifies the IT buying experience for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) through the IT channel ecosystem and solves challenges around billing and provisioning through automation.

“As we continue to evolve our technology and marketplace to meet the needs of SMBs, the new investment will provide capital to accelerate innovation and continued expansion into new global markets,” Pax8 Chief Executive Officer John Street said in the release.

“This strong funding round reflects the powerful work Pax8 is doing to enable and grow SMBs through our partners, employees, technology, education and support,” he said. “Year over year, we continue to experience record-breaking growth, and we look forward to working with SoftBank to continue elevating our performance.”

Related: Edge Cloud Network Firm Fastly Acquires Fanout

In March, edge cloud network provider Fastly acquired push platform Fanout for an undisclosed sum. Fanout’s platform makes it easy to build and scale real-time and streaming APIs such as live chat support, gaming, video stream and eCommerce.

The integration of Fanout will help allow for real-time app development at the edge with improved time to market and reduced friction at a time when a digital experience’s speed and performance are crucial to engaging and converting customers.

Fanout will let the Fastly platform in its ability to delivery transport agnostic real-time development, while also letting customers use their existing HTTP.