SignalFx
SignalFx is a real-time cloud-native observability platform providing infrastructure, APM, and microservices monitoring across nine global cloud realms. It now operates as Splunk Observability Cloud (within Cisco) and serves enterprise IT and DevOps teams with subscription-based SaaS and AI-driven SRE capabilities.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2013
- HeadquartersSan Francisco, United States
- Headcount5,001–10,000
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What SignalFx does
SignalFx is a cloud-native observability platform originally founded in 2013 and headquartered in San Francisco. The platform provides real-time monitoring and observability for microservices, serverless functions, and container-orchestrated environments (Docker and Kubernetes), ingesting telemetry across any data source or application type. Its underlying technology centers on a streaming metrics engine purpose-built for cloud-native architectures, deployed across nine global realms (US0/1/2, EU0/1/2, JP0, AU0, SG0) on AWS and GCP to support data sovereignty and low-latency access. The product portfolio includes SignalFx Infrastructure Monitoring, SignalFx APM (with distributed tracing), and Splunk DevOps Solutions, now unified under the Splunk Observability Cloud suite alongside capabilities such as Digital Experience Analytics, Agent Observability, and AI SRE.
SignalFx was acquired by Splunk on October 2, 2019 for a reported ~$1.05 billion, and became the foundation of Splunk Observability Cloud. Splunk itself was subsequently acquired by Cisco in 2023, making SignalFx part of Cisco's portfolio under the Splunk business. The platform is sold as a SaaS subscription with a product-led growth motion (free trial via login.signalfx.com) complemented by Splunk's enterprise field sales for larger deployments and volume licensing. Target customers are IT operations and DevOps teams in large enterprises that need unified visibility across complex multi-cloud and hybrid environments — a market segment projected to grow from $4.8B in 2025 to $14.6B by 2034 for distributed tracing tools, where SignalFx/Splunk competes against Datadog, New Relic, and Dynatrace.
Pre-acquisition, SignalFx raised approximately $178.5M across five venture rounds from Andreessen Horowitz, CRV, General Catalyst, and Tiger Global Management. The current leadership team includes Arijit Mukherji as CTO. As part of Splunk Observability Cloud, the platform is integrated with alerting tools (PagerDuty), communication platforms (Slack, Microsoft Teams), and underlying cloud infrastructure (AWS EC2/S3/ELB/EKS, GCP), and is differentiated in the market by its real-time streaming architecture and agentic-AI-driven SRE capabilities.
SignalFx firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- SignalFx
- Legal name
- SignalFx
- Website
- https://signalfx.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2013
- Operating status
- Acquired
- Headcount range
- 5,001–10,000 employees
- Short description
- SignalFx is a real-time cloud-native observability platform providing infrastructure, APM, and microservices monitoring across nine global cloud realms. It now operates as Splunk Observability Cloud (within Cisco) and serves enterprise IT and DevOps teams with subscription-based SaaS and AI-driven SRE capabilities.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Where SignalFx is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Francisco
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices2 records
Markets served
SignalFx business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Personnel, Marketing or Sales, Operations
Revenue model
- Cloud Observability SaaS Subscription: SignalFx operates as a SaaS platform providing real-time observability for cloud-native applications. Revenue is generated through subscription-based cloud services with multi-realm deployment options across global regions.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Monthly | Free Trial |
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels3 records
Marketing channels3 records
SignalFx product offering
Product offeringCore offering
SignalFx provides a real-time cloud-native observability platform that monitors infrastructure, microservices, containers (Docker/Kubernetes), serverless functions, and applications across any data source. Delivered as a SaaS subscription through Splunk Observability Cloud, the platform offers streaming metrics, distributed tracing, and AIOps-driven alerting for IT operations and DevOps teams running modern, distributed architectures.
Product overview
SignalFx is a real-time cloud-native observability platform acquired by Splunk in October 2019. The portfolio consists of Splunk Observability Cloud as the unified platform, with SignalFx Infrastructure Monitoring providing infrastructure and container monitoring, SignalFx APM delivering application performance monitoring for microservices, and Splunk DevOps Solutions offering developer-centric observability tools. The combination enables IT teams and developers to monitor and observe data in real-time across any data source or application type, spanning traditional data center and cloud-native environments including Docker and Kubernetes orchestrated containers.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- Splunk Observability Cloud Unified observability platform providing real-time visibility across any environment. Combines infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, and digital experience analytics for cloud-native technologies, including APM, Infrastructure Monitoring, Digital Experience Analytics, Agent Observability, AI SRE, and Log Observer capabilities.
- SignalFx Infrastructure Monitoring
Companies that use SignalFx
Customer profileSegments2 records
Ideal customer profiles2 records
SignalFx technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration29 records
AI capability4 records
Feature3 records
SignalFx partnerships and signals
Strategic signalScale indicators2 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights5 records
SignalFx competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Datadog: Cloud monitoring and observability platform serving IT and DevOps teams with infrastructure monitoring, APM, log management, and security - directly comparable to SignalFx's product scope and the named primary competitor in the distributed tracing market.
- New Relic: Observability platform providing APM, infrastructure monitoring, log management, and browser real user monitoring for cloud-native and enterprise applications - directly competitive with SignalFx across both APM and infrastructure monitoring.
- Dynatrace: Enterprise observability and APM platform with infrastructure monitoring, distributed tracing, and AI-driven analytics (Davis AI) - directly competitive with SignalFx for enterprise observability deals and the third named competitor in the distributed tracing market.
Broad incumbents
- AppDynamics (Cisco): Enterprise APM offering now within Cisco's portfolio alongside SignalFx after Cisco acquired Splunk; provides full-stack application performance monitoring comparable in scope to SignalFx APM and creates direct internal overlap.
- Elastic (Elastic Observability): Search-powered observability platform built on the Elastic Stack - offers APM, log analytics, and infrastructure monitoring comparable to SignalFx's suite and competes for enterprise observability budget.
- ServiceNow (Cloud Observability): ITSM platform that acquired Lightstep to add cloud-native observability; offers a broader IT operations portfolio that competes for enterprise observability budget against SignalFx in ITSM-led evaluations.
Emerging players
- Grafana Labs: Open-source observability stack including Grafana, Loki, Mimir, and Tempo - targets developers and platform teams with a similar cloud-native observability use case as SignalFx and increasingly competes in enterprise deals.
- Honeycomb: Observability platform focused on distributed tracing and event-based debugging for production engineering teams - overlapping use case with SignalFx APM, especially for high-cardinality, event-centric cloud-native applications.
- Chronosphere: Cloud-native observability platform purpose-built for metrics with cost control and reliability focus built on M3DB - competes directly with SignalFx Infrastructure Monitoring for high-scale, cost-sensitive enterprise workloads.
Others
- PagerDuty: Incident response and alerting platform that integrates deeply with SignalFx for notification delivery - an adjacent tool in the observability stack rather than a direct APM competitor, but commonly evaluated together in enterprise observability buying decisions.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
SignalFx social profiles
Digital presenceSignalFx financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
SignalFx leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles1 record
SignalFx funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds5 records
Investors5 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
SignalFx M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about SignalFx
What does SignalFx do?
SignalFx provides a real-time cloud-native observability platform that monitors infrastructure, microservices, containers (Docker/Kubernetes), serverless functions, and applications across any data source. Delivered as a SaaS subscription through Splunk Observability Cloud, the platform offers streaming metrics, distributed tracing, and AIOps-driven alerting for IT operations and DevOps teams running modern, distributed architectures.
Is SignalFx a public or private company?
SignalFx is a private company. It is classified as corporate owned and is currently acquired.
When was SignalFx founded?
SignalFx was founded in 2013. It employs 5,001 to 10,000 people.
Where is SignalFx based?
SignalFx is headquartered in San Francisco, United States, in the North America region.
How does SignalFx make money?
One revenue line is on record: cloud Observability SaaS Subscription.
Who are SignalFx's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Datadog, New Relic and Dynatrace. Broad incumbents are AppDynamics (Cisco), Elastic (Elastic Observability) and ServiceNow (Cloud Observability). Emerging players are Grafana Labs, Honeycomb and Chronosphere. PagerDuty is listed as an others.
Does SignalFx have an API?
Yes. The Splunk Observability Cloud API provides programmatic access to observability data and functionality. Components including Splunk Observability Cloud API, Datapoint Ingest, and Alerting services are operational across multiple realms. Developer documentation is at help.splunk.com/en/splunk-observability-cloud.