San Francisco, California-based Nexmo was able to close its Series C funding round with $18 million. Private equity fund Sorenson Capital led the round which was also participated in by Nexmo's existing investors, Intel Capital and NHN Investment.

Nexmo provides application developers and enterprises around the world with messaging and voice capabilities of the highest quality. The company links web applications directly to billions of phones and allows businesses and their customers to have a two-way instant communication. Line, Viber and other mobile messaging apps use Nexmo as well as Pingdom and Airbnb.

In a statement, Nexmo said it will utilize the procees of the funding round to grow its suite of communication application programming interfaces or APIs as well as scale the company's distribution channels. It will also use the funds to ramp up its sales, support and marketing efforts worldwide. It will also be used to add to the company's workforce.

As part of the deal Sorenson Capital Managing Director Fraser Bullock will be joining the Board of Directors at Nexmo.

Gigaom reported that the latest funding round brings to $22 million the total funds raised by Nexmo. In February, the company was able to raise $3 million. Its competitor in the field is Twilio but took a different path in its bid to expand. Twilio began with voice and then moved to SMS. Nexmo, however, first developed messaging and gradually grew to other telecom services like voice, the report said.

Nexmo Chief Executive Officer Tony Jamous said in the statement, "2013 was a record-breaking year for Nexmo, and securing our latest funding round is clear validation of the scalability of our cloud model. Nexmo is disrupting the telecom industry in a positive way by removing barriers between carriers around the world and enterprises. By doing so, Nexmo has enabled those enterprises to adapt their businesses on a virtual 'real time' basis and reach their customers quickly through an ultra-efficient ecosystem between wireless carriers and phones."