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Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran at the company’s headquarters. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop)
Microsoft made an equity investment in Veeam, deepening its partnership with the Kirkland, Wash.-based data protection and ransomware recovery company, focused on their joint work in cloud and AI technologies.
The companies did not disclose the amount of Microsoft’s investment or the size of its stake. Private equity firm Insight Partners remains Veeam’s majority owner, Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran told GeekWire. Eswaran said Microsoft’s investment reflects the strength of their partnership and Veeam’s leadership in the data resilience market.
Microsoft and Veeam last year announced a partnership to integrate Microsoft’s AI services into Veeam’s data resilience platform. Their joint engineering work is focused on areas including AI-based threat detection, security-focused AI assistants for customers, AI-generated data insights, and the protection of data used by AI models.
Large language models “are based on data, and so you need to start thinking about protecting those LLMs,” Eswaran explained. “So we are getting on a roadmap to protect the very data that fuels AI in the first place.”
Microsoft’s investment follows Veeam’s announcement of a $2 billion secondary share sale in December, which valued the company at $15 billion.
As a privately held company, Veeam doesn’t disclose detailed financial information, but Eswaran said its revenue run rate surpassed $1.74 billion in 2024, with more than $500 million in adjusted cash EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization), a key measure of profitability.
Because of that profitability, Veeam doesn’t need an initial public offering for financial liquidity, Eswaran said. However, the company plans to go public at some point in the future, and it’s watching the market and macroeconomic environment to determine the right moment, he said.
Veeam last year officially relocated its headquarters from Ohio to the Seattle area, drawn by the close proximity of major cloud providers and the deep pool of technical talent. It now employs more than 5,500 people in 50 countries, including nearly 100 in the Seattle area, many of them based out of its Kirkland headquarters.
The company has 550,000 customers in more than 150 countries.
