Alkira, which has raised $30M from KPCB, Sequoia, and GV, emerges from stealth with networking-as-a-service tech for building and deploying multicloud networks
Raynovich: Startup Alkira's Khan brothers tap multi-cloud magic Gina Narcisi / CRN : Former Viptela Founding Brothers Launch Cloud Networking Startup Alkira Tweets: Shamus McGillicuddy / @shamusema : I did a deep dive briefing with Alkira a couple weeks ago. A very promising solution for multi-cloud networking, from the founders of Viptela. https://siliconangle.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Alkira is a reunion play: the Khan brothers, who built SD-WAN company Viptela, are applying that routing pedigree to multicloud networking as a subscription service rather than boxed appliances, with $30M from KPCB, Sequoia, and GV behind the launch.
The bet aged well by the corpus's own timeline — four years later Alkira raised a $100M Series C led by Tiger Global, bringing total funding to $176M — while Cloudbrink repeated the same emerge-from-stealth playbook for hybrid-workforce networking two years after this debut.
First-order effects
- Enterprises stitching together AWS, Azure, and GCP networks get a vendor offering network build-out as-a-service instead of assembling overlays from separate cloud-native tools, and KPCB, Sequoia, and GV now hold early positions in that category.
Second-order effects
- Incumbent WAN and SD-WAN vendors face pressure to offer their own consumption-priced multicloud networking, since a service spun up in software undercuts appliance-led sales cycles.
- Cloudbrink's later stealth emergence with hybrid-workforce networking shows the category attracting follow-on founder teams chasing the same buyer.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, enterprise networking consolidates around cloud-delivered platforms where the network is provisioned like compute — the same virtualize-the-infrastructure logic that carried Alkira to its later growth round.
The trend: Enterprise networking is reversing into the cloud itself, with ex-Viptela founders and top-tier venture capital turning multicloud connectivity from an appliance purchase into a subscription service.