Nutanix, the unicorn startup driving VMware crazy, just filed for an IPO

Nutanix, a startup that makes technology for big companies' data centers, just filed its S1 as it prepares to go public early next year.

The S1 shows Nutanix, which is reportedly valued at over $2 billion on private markets, is growing fast but losing a lot of money.

Its revenue grew 8x over the past two years, from just about $30.5 million in the year ended July 31, 2013, to $241.4 million two years later.

But its net loss widened, too, from $44.7 million $126.1 million in the same period.

As is typical in most enterprise startups, most of its operating cost came in sales and marketing. In 2015, it spent $161.8 million in sales and marketing, more than half of its revenue. Its 2013 sales and marketing cost was $27.2 million, almost its entire revenue of $30.5 million.

Nutanix has raised $312 million since 2011, and was last valued at about $2 billion.

Nutanix is one of the leaders in the space called "virtualized storage." It offers an all-in-one hardware box for corporate data centers that combines a computer server and storage.

Specifically, Nutanix sells a one piece of data center hardware that combines a computer server and computer storage and the special software used to make data centers run more efficiently called a "virtualization hypervisor."

As we previously reported, the increasing tension between partners-turned-competitors Nutanix and VMware erupted into an ugly, very public, and somewhat entertaining squabble earlier this year.