NI economy: Belfast company Cloudsmith receives £50m investment

Cloudsmith, a Belfast software company, has received a £50m investment led by two US venture capital firms. It is the largest deal of this kind ever done by a Northern Ireland-based technology company and the investment will be used to increase hiring and accelerate software development. The company currently has 130 staff, mainly based in Belfast. The size of the investment suggests Cloudsmith is on its way to "unicorn" status - a $1bn valuation. "We're not quite a unicorn yet, but we're close," the firm's chief executive Glenn Weinstein said. "Watch this space because Cloudsmith is clearly headed to that territory," he told BBC News NI. The funding round was led by California-based TCV, whose notable investments include Facebook and Airbnb. New York-based Insight Partners and other existing backers have also reinvested. Cloudsmith was founded by Alan Carson and Lee Skillen who worked for the New York Stock Exchange technology operation in Belfast. The firm's technology lets companies update and send software securely around their business using the cloud. Managing this "software supply chain" is becoming increasingly complex as large amounts of software code is being generated by