Sometimes $233 million just isn't enough.
That's at least the case at DocuSign, the online documents management company that appears more poised than ever to go public in upcoming months. DocuSign announced on Wednesday that it had added another $45 million to its latest funding from two strategic investors, Dell and Intel Capital, bringing the total size of that Series F round to $278 million.
The bulk of the round was announced two weeks before, when DocuSign unveiled its $233 million investment from a range of investors in the venture and financial sectors that gave it a valuation a source told Forbes now stood at $3 billion.
Investors are counting on DocuSign to handle more and more of the document transactions of large businesses like real estate companies and credit unions. Morgan Stanley, for example, has 14,000 financial advisors on the product. While DocuSign's known for its signature capability, which CEO Keith Krach told Forbes earlier in May was just 5% of the company's business, it's that potential for paperless and secure management that has got the attention of strategic partners in the enterprise space. DocuSign has taken checks from Marc Benioff's Salesforce.com as well as Google Ventures, SAP Ventures, VISA and Comcast in the past.
Now Dell and Intel Capital have joined that group, with Dell CEO Michael Dell saying in a statement that DocuSign had massive potential to transform digital transaction management globally. A security executive at Intel said his team would be integrating its security systems with DocuSign to run securely on Intel-powered devices. The company also announced a partnership with Microsoft.
So what does the backing mean for DocuSign? A spokesperson tells Forbes that the new investors will join the effort to find DocuSign more customers than the 50 million users it has today in what it calls a 'DocuSign Global Trust Network.' The extra money can help in bringing more vertical-specific versions of DocuSign to sectors like healthcare and telcos.
What it also means, however, is that DocuSign has now raised more than $500 million to date and is clearly banking it can be much bigger than a $3 billion business. DocuSign appears firmly on a path to go public, and likely in a manner of months, not a few years. That'd also help keep the peace between rival strategic investors, of which there are increasingly many. Late-stage specialist investors like Wellington Management Company got in months ago.
Speaking earlier in May, CEO Krach declined to comment on IPO plans. The digital ink from Dell and Intel Capital may have just done some talking for him.
