Chinese Cloud Enabler Zenlayer Gets USD 30 Million, Targeting Emerging Markets

Healthcare, Technology, Financials Author: Sirui Zhou Aug 15, 2019 10:43 AM (GMT+8)

Zenlayer closes series B round of funding of USD 30 Million by Forebright Capital(光远资本), Volcanics Venture(火山石资本), F&G Venture(方广资本), etc. The funding will be used for R&D and market expansion in India, Indonesia and Brazil.

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Zenlayer closes series B round of funding of USD 30 Million by Forebright Capital(光远资本), Volcanics Venture(火山石资本), F&G Venture(方广资本), etc. The funding will be used for R&D and market expansion in India, Indonesia and Brazil.

Zenlayer is a network infrastructure service provider, holding over 120 data center and 6.2T Backbone Network in six continents, providing IDC (internet data center), bare metal cloud, etc. Currently, its business covers cloud service, internet, gaming and telecom industries.

Since its founding in 2014, Zenlayer has noticed the fast-changing global business environment and the IT demand behind. In the beginning, Zenlayer offered IDC services to Chinese enterprises seeking global business opportunities. In 2016, with the increasing demand for cloud network connectivity due to the enlarging enterprise traffic, Zenlayer began to develop network connectivity services globally. In 2019, Zenlayer merged with Fabric4cloud (大河云联), one of the leading SD-WAN (software-defined networking in a wide area) startups.

Chinese companies, especially those in the consumer internet area, are actively seeking overseas business opportunities; at the same time, foreign businesses seek to enter the Chinese market. Therefore, global, cross-regional network services have become one of the most urgent market demand.

SD-WAN allows companies to build high-performance WANs with lower cost. It connects enterprise networks, including branch offices and data centers, over large geographic distances. Besides, edge computing is highly reliant on SD-WAN. 

The global SD-WAN market size is expected to grow from USD 1.0 billion in 2018 to USD 4.1 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 32.7%, according to a report from MarketsandMarkets; the service providers segment is expected to see a higher market share. 

The network infrastructure supplier currently serves Chinese company for international expansion as well as foreign companies, but not targets domestic market to avoid competition.

Based on SD-WAN, Zenlayer has major clients including China's cloud service providers such as Alibaba Cloud and Tencent, and Internet companies such as LinkedIn, Microsoft, ByteDance and Cheetah Mobile.