LucidLink, the US-Bulgarian cloud storage startup that connects creative teams around the world, announced the closing of a $20M Series B round. The funding round is led by the San Francisco-based growth fund Headline. Existing investors BrightCap Ventures and Baseline Ventures also participated., Top Tier Capital Partners joined the round as a new investor.
The investment round follows the sustained 12% month-over-month growth of LucidLink over the last year, which has resulted in over 400% revenue increase, 154% net customer retention, and a doubling of its workforce. During this period, LucidLink also benefited from a 400% increase in storage capacity.
“We’ve put together an exciting roadmap significantly extending the lead we’ve already built in addressing how people and companies utilize the cloud to solve tough remote collaboration problems. Part of this round will be used to grow the technical team with world-class engineers, who are interested in solving challenging problems our customers face both today and in the future,” said co-founder and CTO George Dochev.
The funding comes exactly one year after the $12M Series A round of LucidLink in May 2021 and raises the total funding of the company to $40M. Now, the team will use the fresh capital to fuel growth priorities for LucidLink which include expanding their sales, marketing, and development teams.
“LucidLink was one of BrightCap’s first investments back in 2018 when the Bulgarian tech office was just getting set up. We were fascinated by the revolutionary file storage technology that LucidLink was developing and impressed by the world-class team behind it. We have continued supporting the company in every subsequent round and are very happy to see their growing success. LucidLink will use part of the capital to recruit and expand the Bulgarian office,” Elina Halatcheva, Managing Partner of BrightCap Ventures, shares for The Recursive.
What is a cloud-native file service
Founded in 2016 by George Dochev and Peter Thompson, LucidLink provides its users with fast and secure remote access to large files and datasets that perform like a local disk. The two co-founders met at DataCore Software where George Dochev headed the technical development team and later led the whole engineering division.
The SaaS solution of LucidLink allows remote teams to have access to data across the globe, as an extension of their local drive. In essence, it eliminates the need to download and synchronize data and it is delivered without a need for middleware or any virtual or physical appliance. The service supports all major operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and macOS.
Furthermore, the solution is based on a pay-as-you-go model and offers its clients extended flexibility. It targets media and entertainment businesses as it helps them with their remote post-production workflows. LucidLink also meets the needs of architecture engineering and construction businesses, as it allows for remote team collaboration on CAD/CAM projects. LucidLink has attracted international clients such as Netflix, Shell, Vice, NFL, MTV, JP Morgan, and Warner Bros.
The momentum and the future roadmap of LucidLink
The first $1.6M round of LucidLink came from top-tier Silicon Valley investors in 2017, which was followed by a $6M seed round that included the participation of the Bulgarian BrightCap Ventures. Being headquartered in San Francisco where its sales, marketing, and founders team is based, LucidLink has its R&D team based in Bulgaria. The total workforce of the company has reached around 60 people, with a third working from Sofia, Bulgaria.
The company will be looking to grow its local engineering team.
