LightStep Acquisition, Valuation, Funding & Investors

LightStep was acquired by ServiceNow for $510M in May 2021.

LightStep acquisition price

$510M

Acquired by ServiceNow · May 2021

Cumulative funding LightStep raised

$70M

across 4 funding rounds

Key investors in LightStep

  • Harrison Metal
  • Redpoint
  • Cowboy Ventures
  • Sequoia Capital
  • Altimeter Capital
  • Heavybit

LightStep Overview

About LightStep

LightStep is a San Francisco-headquartered observability platform delivering distributed tracing and metrics for microservices architectures. The service processes petabytes of trace data daily from applications built on Kubernetes, AWS Lambda, and Istio service mesh. LightStep integrates with Datadog, PagerDuty, and Prometheus for root cause analysis in environments like those of Twilio and Delivery Hero. Backed by Sequoia Capital, it supports high-cardinality tagging across thousands of services.


Founded

2015

HQ

United StatesSan Francisco, CA

Status

Acquired

Customer focus

B2B

Revenue model

Subscription

Valuation

$303M (Dec 2018)

LightStep Acquisition

LightStep was acquired by ServiceNow for $510M on 10 May 2021.

Before the acquisition LightStep had raised $70M across 4 funding rounds.

ServiceNow acquired LightStep, a San Francisco-based observability platform founded in 2015 that provides advanced application performance monitoring, distributed tracing, and real-time analysis of system-wide metrics for cloud-native applications. Customers included GitHub, Twilio, and Spotify. The deal was announced on May 10, 2021, and completed on June 15, 2021. ServiceNow aimed to enhance its IT workflow products by integrating LightStep's capabilities, enabling DevOps engineers to monitor, detect, and resolve issues in modern applications faster. This acquisition expanded ServiceNow's observability offerings beyond traditional IT operations to support enterprise-wide digital transformation, combining LightStep's technology—built by creators of Google's Monarch system and OpenTelemetry—with ServiceNow's platform. The transaction was one of ServiceNow's larger deals at the time, amid a wave of observability platform acquisitions by companies like IBM and Datadog. LightStep had raised over $70 million from investors including Sequoia and Altimeter Capital.

LightStep acquisition details
AcquirerDateTypePrice
10 May 2021Strategic M&A$510M

LightStep Valuation

LightStep is currently valued at $303M, based on its Series C in December 2018.

The $41M round was led by Altimeter Capital, with participation from Redpoint, Sequoia Capital, Cowboy Ventures and Harrison Metal.

LightStep valuation by funding round

LightStep valuation by funding round
DateStageValuation
Dec 2018Series C$303M

LightStep Funding History

LightStep has raised a total of $70M across 4 funding rounds.

LightStep's first fundraising round was a $2M seed round in October 2013. The most recent completed round was a $41M Series C in December 2018.

LightStep funding rounds

LightStep funding rounds
DateStageInvestorsRaisedValuationDeal Summary
Dec 2018Series CAltimeter Capital (lead); Redpoint; Sequoia Capital; Cowboy Ventures; Harrison Metal$41M$303MLightStep is a San Francisco-based provider of application performance management (APM) solutions tailored for organizations adopting microservices and serverless architectures. The company announced a $41 million Series C funding round on December 5, 2018, led by Altimeter Capital, with participation from existing investors Redpoint, Sequoia Capital, Cowboy Ventures, and Harrison Metal. This brought LightStep's total funding to $70 million, following prior rounds including a $29 million raise in 2017 comprising Series A ($7.5 million led by Redpoint) and Series B ($20 million led by Sequoia). The funding was intended to accelerate product development, market expansion, and innovation to meet growing demand in the APM space for modern architectures. LightStep's CEO Ben Sigelman highlighted rapid growth across customer base, innovation pace, revenue, headcount, and customer value delivery. Altimeter Capital partner Kevin Wang emphasized LightStep's role in redefining APM with its team, vision, product, and customers amid the shift to microservices and serverless. LightStep operated in a competitive APM market alongside players like Dynatrace, AppDynamics, and Splunk.
Nov 2017Series BSequoia Capital (lead); Redpoint; Cowboy Ventures; Harrison Metal$20M-LightStep is a San Francisco-based provider of an enterprise-class Application Performance Management (APM) platform designed to help organizations adopting microservices and serverless architectures gain visibility and control over their systems. Its first product, LightStep [x]PM, offers accurate snapshots of software systems to identify bottlenecks and resolve incidents rapidly, serving customers like Twilio, Lyft, Yext, GitHub, and DigitalOcean. The company was founded by experts including Ben Sigelman, who built Google's Dapper distributed tracing system and co-created the OpenTracing standard. On November 14, 2017, LightStep announced $29 million in total funding, comprising a Series A round of $7.5 million led by Redpoint and a Series B round of $20 million led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from seed investors Cowboy Ventures and Harrison Metal in both rounds. The funding was intended to accelerate product development and meet growing market demand as the company emerged from stealth. Sequoia Partner Aaref Hilaly joined the board, highlighting LightStep's potential as a core platform for managing containerized and microservices-based application environments. Later developments included a Series C round in December 2018 at a $303.24 million post-money valuation and total funding accumulating to around $70-95 million before LightStep was acquired by ServiceNow on May 10, 2021.
Dec 2015Series ARedpoint (lead); Heavybit; Cowboy Ventures; Harrison Metal$8M--
Oct 2013SeedHarrison Metal (lead)$2M--

Who has invested in LightStep?

6 investors have backed LightStep across its funding rounds, including Harrison Metal, Redpoint, Cowboy Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Altimeter Capital and Heavybit.

Lead investors include Altimeter Capital, Sequoia Capital, Redpoint and Harrison Metal.


LightStep Investors

Investors in LightStep by funding rounds participated
InvestorHQRoundsRoleFirst check
Harrison MetalUnited StatesSan Francisco, CA4LeadOct 2013
RedpointUnited StatesSan Francisco, CA3LeadDec 2015
Cowboy VenturesUnited StatesSan Francisco, CA3ParticipantDec 2015
Sequoia CapitalUnited StatesSan Francisco, CA2LeadNov 2017

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LightStep Competitors

LightStep competitors include listed companies like Happiest Minds Technologies and Claritev, and private ones like Cortex, /dev/agents, Chalk and Crisp.

Public and private companies comparable to LightStep
CompanyHQStatusRevenueEBITDAValuationRevenue Multiple
CortexUnited StatesSan Francisco, CAPrivate--$470M-
Happiest Minds TechnologiesIndiaIndiaPublicly listed$242M$43M$505M1.9x
/dev/agentsUnited StatesSan Francisco, CAPrivate--$500M-
ChalkUnited StatesSan Francisco, CAPrivate--$500M-
CrispUnited StatesBentonville, ARPrivate--$500M-
ClaritevUnited StatesUnited StatesPublicly listed$965M$466M$522M5.2x
Last FYEV/RevenueEV/EBITDA
RevenueEBITDALast FYLTM2027ELast FYLTM2027E
Happiest Minds Technologies$242M$43M2.0x1.9x11.3x10.5x
Claritev$965M$466M5.4x5.2x11.2x8.5x
Latent View Analytics$111M$27M4.4x4.0x17.8x18.3x
Plus Alpha Consulting$109M$36M4.2x3.7x12.7x9.3x
Spire Global$72M($40M)5.1x4.7x(9.2x)(12.6x)
Hanwang Technology Co$282M($14M)2.2x-(44.3x)-
Cognyte Software$400M$21M1.4x1.3x26.9x9.6x
Vista Group$94M$5M4.4x4.0x90.0x21.8x

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Common questions about LightStep

When was LightStep founded?LightStep was founded in 2015.
Where is LightStep headquartered?LightStep is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, United States.
Is LightStep publicly listed?No, LightStep was acquired by ServiceNow in May 2021.
Who acquired LightStep?LightStep was acquired by ServiceNow in May 2021.
How much was LightStep acquired for?LightStep was acquired for $510M in May 2021.
What is LightStep's valuation?LightStep was last valued at $303M in its Series C in December 2018.
How much funding has LightStep raised?LightStep has raised $70M across 4 funding rounds.
What was LightStep's last funding round?LightStep's last funding round was a $41M Series C in December 2018, led by Altimeter Capital.
Who are LightStep's investors?LightStep's investors include Harrison Metal, Redpoint, Cowboy Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Heavybit and Altimeter Capital.
Which companies are comparable to LightStep?Companies comparable to LightStep include Cortex, Happiest Minds Technologies, /dev/agents, Chalk, Crisp and Claritev.

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