Tintri raises $125 million, putting it on track for 2016 IPO

The funding will help the company expand and put it on a trajectory sometime next year for a cashflow-breakeven quarter, meaning revenue meets or exceeds costs. That milestone is generally highly valued by IPO investors.

In an environment where many start-up companies race to achieve a valuation of $1 billion or more, and strive to stay private as long as possible, Tintri declined to state the valuation its investors assigned it in this round.

“We’e not interested in being the company that had the highest valuation as a private company,” said co-founder and chief technology officer Kieran Harty. Compared to its peer group, “we’re interested in being the company with the highest valuation as a public company.”

The company focuses on customers using virtualized workloads, meaning one single machine handles multiple operating systems and applications rather than dedicated machines for each. Such systems generally provide more flexibility, at lower cost and higher speed, compared with traditional methods.

Existing Tintri investors Insight Venture Partners, Lightspeed Ventures, Menlo Ventures and NEA also participated in the funding round, which will all go to the company rather than buying out early employees and investors.

Tintri, founded in 2008, has now raised a total of $260 million, including $75 million in February 2014.

Leading data-storage providers include EMC Corp. , NetApp , and Seagate Technology .

(Reporting by Sarah McBride; Editing by Andrew Hay)