Large funding rounds and larger valuations are no proxy for real-world success – just look at AI wearable firm Humane: It raised $240 million in VC funding at a reported $850 million valuation before it had a product.
The product (its universally panned “AI pin”) was an absolute bomb and less than a year after it launched, it started looking for a buyer. This month it found one: A generous HP, which is forking out $116 million.
Investors like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman must, clearly, look elsewhere for their big exit and from February 28, the AI pin will be bricked; i.e. incapable of calling, messaging, AI queries, et al, and the company will bulk delete its customers’ photos and other data.
(A fool and his money are soon parted, if the magic words “generative AI” are incanted whilst walking widdershins round a shiny pitch deck.)
A more credible company, NinjaOne, actually *does* have a useful product and some very substantial customers – it names the likes of Lyft, NVIDIA, and Porsche among 24,000 others– and today announced a $500 million in Series C extensions at a $5 billion valuation. That, of course, doesn’t make it a good company (hence the dropped lede and long disclaimer) but arguably does make its round worthy of a bit more attention. Read on…
What is NinjaOne, prithee?
NinjaOne says that its mission is to “simplify IT and security with a single endpoint management platform”. It does a lot of things that Microsoft Intune does – but boasts what it says is “native multi-tenancy, greater flexibility, and more support for non-Microsoft products.”
Intune, by contrast, is a challenge for MSPs, it claims, because “If you’re trying to manage 100 clients, it means logging into 100 different Intune accounts (a common thread among MS Office services in general).
As a remote monitoring and management (RMM) provider NinjaOne lets users pull information from remote endpoints and network, perform various remote IT management tasks on them – and with the recent acquisition of Dropsuite, back up SaaS and mobile devices alike too.
Users can manage everything from servers to mobile devices (across multiple platforms). The company does more than just RMM and is building out a place for itself as an integrated device management and security platform provider. For example, it offers cross-OS patch management (Linux, Mac, Windows), cloud-based and without VPN; it also offers a platform to configure when and how EDR/antivirus runs that lets users integrate the likes of CrowdStrike and other EDR providers.
Consolidation is king...
The company’s founders have tapped into a pronounced trend among CISOs and other security leaders to consolidate toolings and aim for cross-platform capabilities via one (we apologise in advance for the cliche) single pane of glass.
The Series C extension funding will go toward AI research and development, product innovation, global expansion, and provide funding for the company’s pending acquisition of Dropsuite, it said.
“NinjaOne has the potential to be a generational company,” said one investor, Derek Zanutto, General Partner at CapitalG.
It is, he said giddily, “reimagining what is possible in automated endpoint management… we find NinjaOne to be one of the strongest IT software companies in the world. Endpoints are nearly impossible to manage across the enterprise, and CapitalG is committed to helping NinjaOne and its customers succeed where others have failed.”
Just don't expect it to manage your Humane AI pin.
