SolidFire Raises $25 Million

SolidFire, a provider of all-SSD primary storage systems for cloud service providers, has raised $25 million in its second funding round, bringing its total funding to $37 million.

NEA, Valhalla Partners, and Novak Biddle participated in the round.

The company also received individual investments from advisors Frank Slootman, former CEO of Data Domain, David Schneider, former VP of Worldwide Sales at Data Domain, and Greg Papadopoulos, Ph.D., former VP and CTO of Sun Microsystems.

Funds will be used for the expansion of the sales and marketing departments to support growing customer demand for the company’s all-SSD systems in the cloud.

"As an early investor, we are pleased to see the progress that SolidFire made this past year," said Charles Curran, Valhalla general partner. "They have early access systems deployed with some of the world’s largest cloud service providers and the customer feedback has been excellent."

"SolidFire has a great head start coupled with deep customer interest; we are excited to be able to accelerate their execution in the market," said Harry Weller, NEA general partner. "The SolidFire technology is extremely advanced and built from the ground-up to leverage the benefits of an all-SSD platform. Combining the latest in performance management, real-time data efficiencies, and system automation, their product is very attractive to cloud service providers, who can take advantage of this technology today."

"We have been a SolidFire investor from the beginning. Their ability guarantee storage performance to thousands of volumes within a shared infrastructure is a powerful capability and we are impressed by the customer interest and industry recognition that the company is experiencing," added Phil Bronner, general partner at Novak Biddle Venture Partners. "We are looking forward to the company’s expansion in the next few months and we are pleased to contribute to its success."

"This new funding round and the continued commitment of our initial investors show that they recognize the potential that SolidFire has in this market with an all-SSD storage system optimized for the cloud," said Dave Wright, SolidFire founder and CEO. "The response to our Early Access Program launched only this summer has been overwhelming. We have a very solid sales pipeline and we will be investing in our sales and marketing team to respond to customer interest and accelerate our growth."