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Open Source Pioneer Digium Secures $13.8 Million in VC Funding
[August 09, 2006]

Open Source Pioneer Digium Secures $13.8 Million in VC Funding


TMCnet Executive Editor
 

The dollar amount in this story was corrected by the company.  The financing totaled $13.8 million, instead of the $13.2 million that was previously reported.

 

Digium (News - Alert) (News - Alert) Inc., the creator of the Asterisk open source PBX, on Wednesday announced it has secured $13.8 million in its first round of venture capital funding from Matrix Partners, a well-known VC firm within the open source community.



 

Matrix Partners was the original investor in open source application server company, JBoss, which was recently sold to Red Hat. In addition, the VC firm has also invested in companies like Hyperic, a provider of open source IT management platforms.


 

In a press release, the company said the funding will help fuel the continued growth of Digium and Asterisk, especially in launching new offerings for the enterprise communications market, ranging from small to large businesses.

 

“We have maintained steady growth and have been consistently profitable. We felt seeking outside funding was unnecessary, but Matrix Partners' success and vision in the open source industry was too compelling to ignore,” said Mark Spencer, president of Digium and creator of Asterisk. “Matrix's experience as a JBoss initial investor was a key differentiator. Early on, we realized Matrix's involvement would help us grow more quickly.”

 

Profitable since 2002, Digium has experienced 100 percent growth in each of the last several years. Today Asterisk boasts over one million users (growing by over 1,000 downloads per day), and 130 Genuine Asterisk solutions partners worldwide.

 

“Digium is definitely in a position to become the next big open source company, behind Red Hat, JBoss and MySQL. Their current revenues, profitability, and growth rates are extraordinary,” said David Skok, a general partner at Matrix Partners and JBoss board member.

 

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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.

 

 

 


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