Huddle Raises $51 Million Series D Round to Accelerate Growth and Bring Secure External Collaboration to Enterprises Worldwide

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM and SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Dec 11, 2014) - Huddle, the enterprise cloud collaboration service, today announced that it has secured a $51 million Series D round of funding. The capital will be used to expand Huddle's leadership in secure external collaboration; transforming the way global teams work together by enabling enterprise and government organizations to simply and securely share, discuss and work on files in the cloud.

Funds will be invested to continue Huddle's rapid expansion in the US and Europe. The company will also double the size of its product team in order to continue the constant development and innovation of the product.

The financing was led by Zouk Capital, with participation from the Hermes GPE Environmental Innovation Fund, managed by Hermes GPE, and all existing investors, including Matrix Partners, Jafco Ventures, DAG Ventures, and Eden Ventures. Nathan Medlock, Partner at Zouk Capital, led the deal and will join the Huddle board.

This year, Huddle has seen significant growth in its business, with sales to enterprise customers tripling in the first three quarters of 2014 over the same period last year. The company also secured seven of its ten biggest contracts to date in the same time frame. With offices in San Francisco, London, New York and Washington D.C., Huddle continues to strengthen its leadership position in the rapidly growing market for enterprise content collaboration in the cloud. Customers include Grant Thornton, Baker Tilly International, National Grid, P&G, Keolis, Williams Lea, Driscoll's and Panasonic Europe.

Following the launch of its US government offering in 2013, Huddle has also added four US federal agencies to its portfolio, strengthening its already impressive government credentials. The company's government customers globally include 80 percent of central UK government departments, NASA, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Government of Greenland, the NHS, and numerous local government organizations.

"We've seen the content collaboration market come of age over the last year, with enterprises and governments now replacing legacy software at scale and embracing this new way of working," explained Alastair Mitchell, CEO, Huddle. "There has also been an increasing trend away from simple cloud storage. It has become a low-value commodity and simply replicates the age-old problem of content getting lost and siloed on shared drives with a new one -- content now just gets forgotten about in the cloud. Instead, business managers have realized that secure collaboration workspaces that enable teams within and across the firewall to work together on content is where the real value now lies. Effective collaboration results in greater productivity, supports decision-making, ensures teams meet milestones and ultimately drives business growth. CIOs are also recognizing the strategic business value of content collaboration and, as a result, Huddle is becoming a vital and widely deployed part of their new cloud technology stack. We're growing incredibly fast and we're excited that we've been able to bring on board new investors to help us on the next stage of our journey."

"Huddle is disrupting the enterprise technology space and transforming the way that teams and companies work together," said Samer Salty, CEO of Zouk Capital. "On its mission to improve workforce productivity, Huddle has secured a strong client-base of enterprise and government organizations. The company's impressive growth and customer credentials prove that today's workforce doesn't need just cloud storage, but intelligent collaboration tools that help teams get their jobs done. Huddle is a great example of a company that meets Zouk's resource efficiency investment thesis: recognizing that not only should we be doing more with less, but that resources, processes and systems are more connected than ever. We're looking forward to supporting such an innovative company through the next phase of its growth."

"The value of cloud content collaboration solutions is increasingly being realized by organizations, particularly because they are easy to provision and enable streamlined access for mobile users," said Vanessa Thompson, Research Director, Enterprise Social Networks and Collaborative Technologies at IDC. "Forming a workspace environment for users that brings together content collaboration capabilities, as well as context from other systems, means that users only need to be in one place to get work done. This becomes increasingly critical as users are being asked to do more with less time."

"Content has always been the critical part of work and Huddle is making it easier for teams to securely access and work on content with their entire business community," said Jim Lundy, CEO and Lead Analyst, Aragon Research. "The world of business apps is changing and predictive content is one of the ways that Huddle is making it easier and faster to find and share content."

About Huddle
Huddle is a secure cloud collaboration service that enables enterprise and government organizations worldwide to securely store, access, share, sync and work on files with everyone they need to -- regardless of whether they are inside or outside of an organization's firewall. Co-headquartered in London and San Francisco and with offices in New York City and Washington D.C., Huddle's customers include 80 percent of Fortune 500 and 80 percent of UK government departments, as well as companies such as Kia Motors, Williams Lea, Driscoll's, Unilever and P&G. The company is privately held and backed by leading venture capital firms in the US and Europe.

More information can be found at www.huddle.com.

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