Only have 1 minute? Here are 3 key takeaways from the piece:
• US-Bulgarian cloud storage startup LucidLink raises $75 million in Series C funding, in what has been the biggest funding round for Bulgaria in 2023 and one of the largest rounds in CEE.
• The round is led by US investment firm Brighton Park Capital, with major existing investors, including Headline, Baseline Ventures, and Adobe Ventures
• The new capital will accelerate LucidLink’s product and engineering development, customer acquisition efforts, and expansion into new verticals and geographies.
Founded in 2016 by entrepreneurs 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 company’s system is built specifically for the modern computing environment, eliminating the need to download or synchronize files by allowing users to stream data directly from the cloud, while also solving one of the biggest pain points for the creative industries that work with complex files and applications across hybrid and remote employee bases.
According to Dochev, LucidLink will now use the latest funding to accelerate the development and updates of its products.
“With this Series C investment, LucidLink will accelerate its most ambitious product updates in the company’s history to expand our technology leadership position, open up new customer use cases, and create more personalized product experiences that enable creative professionals to work more efficiently and effectively,” said George Dochev, CTO and co-founder of LucidLink.
According to the company over the past two years, despite being faced with a challenging environment, LucidLink delivered remarkable growth, including growing its annual recurring revenue (ARR) by nearly 5x and the number of users on its platform by over 4x. Together with the previous rounds, the total funding of the company so far has reached a whooping $115M.
As the company’s CEO and co-founder Peter Thompson points out, legacy collaboration and storage solutions are not designed for the new hybrid workplace reality, so LucidLink is quickly becoming the go-to solution for companies looking to future-proof their businesses.
“Our customers are reaching 5x in productivity gains on previously impossible workflows, and we are excited to see how they continue to unlock new possibilities as we help to accelerate the future of collaborative work,” Thompson said in a statement.
Substantial need for real-time collaboration in the cloud
For the investors, LucidLink’s solution has become “indispensable for hybrid and remote creative professionals”.
“LucidLink recognized a substantial need for real-time collaboration in the cloud, and their solution has rapidly become indispensable for hybrid and remote creative professionals, underscored by its robust recent growth and diverse customer base of leading innovative companies,” said Mike Gregoire and Sam Kentor, Partners at Brighton Park Capital, adding that “the company is well-positioned to build on its momentum”.
With headquarters in San Francisco for its sales, marketing, and founders teams, LucidLink also has an R&D team based in Bulgaria, made of more than 60 people.
For BrightCap Ventures, one of LucidLink’s first investors and earliest backers, the company is another great example of a successful global startup that has been built by local talent.
“We have been one of the first investors and strong believers in LucidLink’s technology, leadership and massive market opportunity. We are enormously proud of what LucidLink’s team has achieved to date, this is another great example of a successful startup that becomes a global leader by leveraging local tech talent. We look forward to witnessing LucidLink’s continued growth and expansion,” Elina Halatcheva, managing partner at BrightCap Ventures, tells The Recursive.
Today, LucidLink customers in creative industries and beyond are collaborating on over one billion files across 40 countries, with customers such as Adobe, A&E Networks, Whirlpool, Shopify, Buzzfeed, and Spotify, as well as Hollywood studios, major broadcasters, brands, digital ad agencies, architectural firms, and gaming companies.
The company has also received numerous accolades, including National Association of Broadcasters Product of the Year in 2022 and 2023 and Inc. Magazine’s Best US Workplaces in 2023.
