GV's Big Bet on Cribl

GV writing one of its biggest checks into Cribl signals that Cribl had moved from a clever Splunk cost saver into a category level infrastructure bet. By August 2024, Cribl had reached a $3.5B valuation on a $319M Series E after climbing from $117M ARR in 2023 to roughly $200M ARR in 2024. That growth came from selling software that sits in the path of machine data, cuts waste before ingest, and increasingly stores the data itself.1 2 3 4 5

• Cribl’s core wedge is very concrete. A customer routes logs through Cribl before sending them to Splunk, Datadog, or another tool. Cribl strips low value data and can charge around $500K per year for a deployment that may save about $4M annually on downstream software bills. That makes budget owners care fast.3 4
• The size of the round reflects expansion beyond a single point tool. Cribl added products like Search, Edge, and Lake, turning a routing layer into a broader data control plane. That matters because the router touches every data source and destination, which creates a natural place to upsell storage, search, and security workflows.3 4 5
• The board seat for GV partner Michael McBride shows this was not passive capital. Late stage firms usually reserve that level of involvement for companies they believe can become durable public scale platforms. Cribl’s 40% valuation step up from $2.5B in 2022 to $3.5B in 2024 was modest by boom era standards, but meaningful in a tighter software market.1 2 5

The next phase is Cribl trying to own more of the telemetry stack, not just the cost optimization layer. If it keeps converting routing relationships into storage and search revenue, the company can grow from a useful add on into a system of record for machine data, which is the kind of platform outcome that justifies unusually large crossover style venture checks.3 4 5