Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has made an equity investment in software startup Rubrik as the two combine products aimed at ransomware-hit users.

The value of the cash injection has not been disclosed by either party. Founded in 2014, Rubrik has to date raised US$553 million from several investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, GoldenArc Capital, Irving Investors, Meros Equity Global Management, Greylock, and of course, Microsoft.

The latest investment by Microsoft has been designed to drive go-to-market activities and co-engineering projects to deliver integrated Zero Trust data protection solutions built on Microsoft Azure.

This work will address rising customer needs to protect against surging ransomware attacks, which are growing 150% annually.

Together, Rubrik and Microsoft will provide Microsoft 365 and hybrid cloud data protection and integrated cloud services on Microsoft Azure in environments spanning data centre, edge and cloud.

Bipul Sinha, co-founder and CEO of Rubrik, said: “As the pioneer of Zero Trust Data Management, Rubrik is helping the world’s leading organizations manage their data and recover from ransomware.

“Together with Microsoft, we are delivering tightly integrated data protection while accelerating and simplifying our customer’s journey to the cloud.”

Nick Parker, corporate vice president, global partner solutions, Microsoft, said: “Customers, across industries, are migrating to the cloud to drive business transformation and realize growth.

“End-to-end application and data management is critical to business success, and we believe that integrating Rubrik’s Zero Trust Data Management solutions with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 will make it easy for customers to advance their Zero Trust journey and increase their digital resilience.”   

Rubrik and Microsoft support more than 2,000 mutual customers globally, and hundreds of petabytes of data under Azure management across six continents.