SandForce Closes $21 Million In Funding

SandForce, Inc., provider of SSD (Solid State Drive) Processors that enable commodity NAND Flash deployment in enterprise and client computing applications, has closed $21 million in Series C funding.

Led by new investor TransLink Capital, the round also included new investors UMC Capital, LSI Corporation, Red Maple Ventures, Darwin Ventures, and A-Data Technology as well as all of the existing SandForce investors – DCM, Storm Ventures, and Tier-1 storage OEMs.

“We have made rapid progress into the marketplace since our launch just six months ago, and we are now shipping silicon to top-tier SSD OEM customers,” said Alex Naqvi, president and CEO of SandForce. “This new funding will help us through our expansion phase as well as accelerate our new products development that will help us maintain our market leadership.”

The patent-pending SandForce DuraClass technology is a set of flash memory management features that enable MLC-based SSDs that deliver world-class reliability, performance, and power efficiency. Current SandForce SSD Processor products include the SF-1500 for Enterprise applications and the SF-1200 for Client applications.

“SandForce has a breakthrough product that has enabled it to rapidly secure top-tier OEM customers in the enterprise and client computing markets for SSDs,” said Jackie Yang, managing director of TransLink Capital and new member of the SandForce Board of Directors. “We believe that the SandForce DuraClass technology will open the door to high-volume use of SSDs in business computing, and we are very bullish about the company’s future.”

“SandForce is making it practical to use low-cost multi-level cell flash memory in enterprise-class devices,” said Ross Katchman, head of corporate development at LSI. “As a leading provider of storage and networking technologies, we believe that flash has an important role to play in the enterprise and that SandForce is well positioned to further the deployment of flash-based solutions.”