Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Baidu plunge $110 million into CloudFlare

By Jamie Hinks

Google Capital, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Baidu have taken part in a new $110 million (around £72 million, or AU$156 million) funding round for CloudFlare.

First reported by Forbes, the funding round led by Fidelity gives the security startup a range of new strategic partnerships with which to extend its business beyond the 5% of all Internet requests that it processes per month.

CEO Matthew Prince is obviously happy with the cash generated, however, he is more enthused about the strategic partnerships the deal has created and they will help the company in a wealth of different areas.

What this means?

The funding round allows CloudFlare to address a number of questions it has been asking itself regarding aspects of its business plan.

In that vein, Qualcomm is now CloudFlare's go-to company for chips and mobile whereas Microsoft could be key to finding more success in the enterprise. Funding from Google Capital, meanwhile, strengthens its existing link with the search behemoth.

The funding announcement comes a week after a deal to provide its security services to Baidu and in turn China's 650 million internet users. That partnership took a whopping four years to complete thanks to what Prince called "a complicated market" in the Far East country.

$182 million in the bank

CloudFlare already has 17 data centers in the country that will go up to 50 by 2016 and in just a day of operating it saved Chinese users some 243 years of time that would otherwise have been wasted waiting for content to load.

On the money front, Prince reiterated that it still has $50 million (around £32 million, or AU$70 million) in the bank from its Series C round and that the latest round means the startup's total investment has now reached $182 million (around £119 million, or AU$258 million).

With the new partnerships in the bag alongside this it certainly looks like we'll be hearing a lot more from CloudFlare in the coming years.