For the week ending April 3, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their 'A' game to the channel including Intel, Mistral AI, Treeline and NetBox Labs as well as a shout-out to the winner of CRN's 2026 Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs.
via CRN
Topping this week's 5 Companies that Came to Win list is Intel which, seeing growing demand for its CPUs, is spending big bucks to acquire full ownership of its advanced semiconductor plant in Ireland.
Also making the list is Mistral AI, which raised $830 million to construct a major data center in Europe powered by 13,800 Nvidia GB300 AI GPUs. IT services startup Treeline is here for raising $25 million in Series A funding to further develop an MSP business designed to fully leverage AI capabilities. And NetBox Labs wins kudos for establishing a strategic partnership with solution provider heavyweight Ahead built around the NetBox open-source network and infrastructure management stack.
The widespread use of NetBox in various IT infrastructures has led to NetBox Labs' rapid partner-fueled growth. Lapcevic said that 40 percent of the company's growth is expected to come from partners over the next year. Right now, 30 percent to 35 percent of the pipeline is already sourced from partner opportunities.
To bolster these partnership efforts, the company has tripled its partner team in the last two months and is expanding into Europe and the Asia-Pacific region by establishing significant partnerships with other large solution providers and systems integrators in the regions.