Rubrik files to go public following alliance with Microsoft

Cloud security provider Rubrik has filed for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange following a flurry of similar flotations.

The company, which provides backup on Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure, expects to raise between $500 million and $700 million when it launches later this year, according to earlier reports from Bloomberg.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Rubrik said annual revenue from subscriptions was $784 million, growing at 47 percent per year from around 6,100 customers. However, the company also incurred a net loss of $277.7 million over the most recent financial year ended January 31.

In the filing, CEO Bipul Sinha said Rubrik had built a distinct architecture that combines data and metadata from business applications. He claimed the approach "uniquely enables application of artificial intelligence directly between the data and security to deliver resilience against cyber attacks."

One product, Ruby, offers AI data defense and recovery using the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service in combination with Rubrik's proprietary software.

"We chose to use Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service based on its security features and because it offers an advanced AI model provisioned in Rubrik's Azure environment such that the data stays within Rubrik's control," the IPO filing said.

Microsoft was also part of a strategic agreement signed with Rubrik in 2021 that included an equity investment from the Redmond software giant and co-engineering projects to deliver integrated Zero Trust data protection solutions built on Azure. The funding was said to total tens of millions of dollars and valued Rubrik at around $4 billion.

The SEC filing reveals the alliance means that Rubrik "committed to spend $220 million over the course of up to 10 years for the use of Azure for our data security solutions and preferentially offer public cloud functionality for Azure to our customers."

Rubrik has itself been the victim of a cyberattack. In March last year, it reported unauthorized access to an IT testing environment as a result of the GoAnywhere vulnerability. Hitachi Energy and Proctor and Gamble were also victims. ®