Berlin-based NetBird, an open-source private network platform, has successfully raised €1.1m in a pre-seed funding round.
The company aims to revolutionize virtual private networks (VPNs) for businesses by simplifying IT infrastructure and networks.
The funding round saw participation from Nauta Capital, Antler, Rheingau Founders, Jan Oberhauser, Emma Tracey, and Mario Goetze, according to a report from Just Entrepreneurs.
NetBird’s unique approach combines the best of VPNs with Zero Trust principles and works on various modern cloud-based infrastructures, such as Google, AWS, Azure, on-premises, at home, and in containers.
NetBird intends to use the new funding to accelerate growth, further develop its technology, and expand its offerings to other platforms, including mobile and serverless. The company’s peer-to-peer connectivity model aims to reduce the complexity of IT infrastructure and networks by bypassing traditional gateways found in Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and VPNs.
NetBird CTO and co-founder Maycon Santos highlighted the difficulty of configuring a site-to-site connection for a company using standard cloud provider guides, and how this complexity increases exponentially as more connections are added. CEO and co-founder Misha Bragin emphasized the company’s goal of allowing IT departments to focus more on security while spending less time managing and maintaining private networks.
Bragin and Santos initially developed the peer-to-peer connectivity technology for a privacy-focused home storage solution for personal data. They soon realized that this zero-configuration solution could be applied to corporate networks, leading to a new direction for the company. The open-source technology has quickly gained traction, with over 4.4 thousand stars on GitHub.
NetBird offers peer-to-peer encryption, multi-factor authentication, Single Sign-On (SSO) integration, and simple access control. The company’s technology uses the WireGuard protocol, which is a fast, modern, and secure VPN protocol that provides a more streamlined and secure alternative to traditional VPN protocols like OpenVPN and IPSec.
Nauta Capital Partner Pratima Aiyagari expressed excitement for NetBird’s potential impact on the future of hybrid IT infrastructure, while Antler Partner Christoph Klink praised the company’s impressive trajectory.
Keep up with all the latest RegTech news here.
Copyright © 2023 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
