CEOs in Technology on Ulitzer

"This investment round is another strong validation for our unique innovation and the business momentum we have experienced since launching our CDN and site acceleration suite," said Ronni Zehavi (pictured), co-founder and CEO of Cotendo, as he announced today it has closed a new round of equity financing led by Tenaya Capital and joined by its current investors -- Sequoia Capital and Benchmark Capital.

"We look forward to using this new capital infusion to drive further rapid growth," Zahavi added.

Cotendo, an innovative CDN and Site Acceleration Services Provider, will use the $12 million in Series C financing to scale its domestic and international market expansion, as well as accelerate the development of innovative technology.

Fast-growing Cotendo also announced that Tom Banahan, Managing Director of Tenaya Capital, will join the Cotendo board of directors. In a statement, Banahan said:

"We see Cotendo's technology as game-changing in this market, and we are excited to contribute to the company's advance to the next level with their site acceleration services. We are enormously impressed with Cotendo's vision and execution and with the results they have accomplished since the company was founded."

Vessels run faster after the barnacles have been scraped from the side of their hulls. The same is true for websites," said Michael Moritz, Partner at Sequoia Capital. "With Cotendo, website operators can peel away the crustaceous encroachments of the last decade and massively speed up the delivery of their content."

Cotendo's comprehensive CDN and Site Acceleration Suite includes high-performance acceleration of dynamic and static content, intelligent load balancing, performance monitoring, real-time reporting and more.

According to Jim Davis, Senior Analyst with Tier1 Research, "Dynamic site and application acceleration services such as those offered by Cotendo will be a key growth driver for the CDN market through 2012 when it is expected to reach the $2bn mark. Network performance will become increasingly important as enterprises continue to ramp up adoption of cloud-based applications during that time frame."

With the new financing Cotendo continues its market expansion and recently opened a local presence in France and Germany. In addition, the company has added several new customers to its rapidly growing US customer roster in the last few months. These include Digg, Meebo, Payoneer and Adbrite.