Another unicorn comes into being with $1b plus valuation

San Francisco

Mutual fund giants T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and Wellington Management led a $90 million (Dh331 million) investment in PagerDuty Inc., making the rapid-response software start-up a unicorn with a private valuation of more than $1 billion. Existing investors Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners also participated in the round, San Francisco-based PagerDuty said.

The financing values the start-up at $1.3 billion. PagerDuty is in the digital operations management — or DevOps — market, which has seen a rash of deals this year, including Broadcom Inc.’s $19 billion takeover of CA Inc. and Atlassian Corp.’s acquisition of PagerDuty competitor OpsGenie Inc.

PagerDuty helps customers respond to website failures in real-time and predict impending outages. In April, Bloomberg reported the company was on track to generate more than $100 million in annual sales.

“We’re in the longest bull market in history, it can’t last forever,” said PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada. “I want to put the company in a position to live beyond me. This is as much an investment in longevity and building an enduring brand as operationally supporting our growth objectives.”

— Bloomberg