XOsoft last week completed a $9 million financing round, led by US venture capital fund JK&B Capital and other existing investors, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham, Seed Capital Partners, Israel fund Platinum Neurone Ventures, and Goldman Sachs. The current round brings the amount raised by the company to $33.5 million. Comverse Technology (Nasdaq: CMVT), which did not participate in the current round, is also a shareholder in XOsoft. XOsoft develops and markets backup solutions for disaster recovery.
XOsoft cofounder and CEO Leonid Shtilman declined to comment on the company value for the financing round, but said the company would not have to raise more money. He explained that the company was currently approaching break-even, and would work on its value, with an eye to a possible IPO.
The current round is designated mostly for expanding the company’s marketing and sales. XOsoft currently has twelve employees in the Boston area, and plans to increase its penetration of the US market, and recruit more staff. Most of the company’s sales are in the US. Shtilman says that the company does not plan to expand its business outside the US in the next six months.
Figure provided by the Israel Venture Capital (IVC) investment research center show that XOsoft’s most recent financing round was in May 2000, when it raised $16 million from Comverse, Goldman Sachs, JK&B, Neuron, and other investors at a company value of $34 million.
Shtilman and VP technology Dimitry Barboi founded XOsoft in 1999. Before founding the company, Shtilman was Mutek Solutions chief scientist, and a cofounder of C3D.
Up until mid-2001, XOsoft managed content for large enterprises, but then changed its business focus, and laid off half of its staff. XOsoft’s two current flagship products are WANSync, which provides backup code solutions for servers, and Data Rewinder, which provides long-term backup for individual computers.
XOsoft currently has 32 employees, of whom ten work in the company’s development center in Israel. The company plans to invest in its next generation of products, and continue focusing on backup for disaster recovery.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on July 6, 2004