Akamai Nabs Netli

Akamai Technologies has agreed to acquire Netli Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif.-based provider of application delivery network services, for approximatley $178 million worth of Akamai stock.

Netli has raised around $46.5 million in total VC funding since its 2000 inception, including an $18 million Series D round in early 2006 at a post-money valuation of approximately $83 million. Shareholders include Alta Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, BlueRun Ventures, Leapfrog Ventures, Morgenthaler Ventures, Reed Elsevier Ventures and Granite Global Ventures.

I wrote the following last year about Netli, while I was still at Red Herring:

Netlis service makes accessing a web server on the other side of the globe as easy as accessing the local area network. This is particularly important given the greater the distance between computers. A desktop in California, accessing a web server in China, could take as long as 15 seconds to pull up the page. This kind of lag between an information request and its delivery makes it difficult to use web-based applications.

Netlis technology helps deliver pages seamlessly despite the distance. This is a huge idea and customers love it, said Gary Little, an investor with Morgenthaler. And I dont mean little customers.