Gridstore Closes $12.5 Million in Series A

Gridstore, Inc. has received $12.5 million in Series A financing led by GGV Capital and ONSET Ventures with participation from all existing investors bringing the company’s total venture funding to $15 million.

With this round of financing, Gridstore will expand its sales channels and accelerate the delivery of grid-based, scale-out storage. Featuring Virtual Controller Technology (VCT), Gridstore’s solution The Grid delivers scalability, performance and cost-efficiency without the limitations of monolithic, legacy architectures.

"Gridstore is changing the game of scale-out storage," said Glenn Solomon, partner, GGV Capital, who also joined Gridstore’s board of directors. "As the vision of a software defined data center becomes a reality, Gridstore is poised to lead this revolution, delivering the next generation of scale-out storage. The company’s approach is completely unique and its customers rave about the combination of simplicity, performance and value that Gridstore delivers. At GGV Capital, we strive to back management teams with the vision and necessary experience to build leading companies in massive markets. We’re delighted to be working with Gridstore because we believe the company’s innovative approach, customer momentum and strong management all add up to a very bright future."

Gridstore CEO, Kelly Murphy, and the company’s board of directors boast years of experience in the growth and liquidity events of some of the emerging technology companies, including Data Domain and BlueArc. This expertise combined with theGridstore technology gives the company the combination it needs to capitalize on the demand for a simple, powerful and affordable grid approach to scale-out storage with unlimited, elastic processing power.

"The industry is undergoing a transformation. Legacy storage architectures weren’t designed to support the requirements of big data, cloud and virtualization environments," said Shomit Ghose, partner, ONSET Ventures, who has also joined Gridstore’s board of directors. "Gridstore is addressing this major market gap and is changing the dynamics of how storage is architected, deployed and managed. The industry is demanding change, signaling a shift which Gridstore will lead. The company has all the ingredients for success and we are pleased to support them as they address this hot market opportunity and ramp for the next stage of rapid growth."

Next Generation of Scale-out Storage – Grid Based
Businesses of all sizes are suffering from the explosion of data. With this, the cost is also exploding and it becomes impossible to scale efficiently with legacy architectures. The Grid addresses the influx of data that traditional scale-out architectures have not been able to solve. Gridstore markets with a software-defined, scale-out storage platform that scales as a business’s data needs scale, no over-provisioning, no wasted capacity.

"As the industry continues its stampede toward virtualization, cloud and big data applications, user demand is reshaping the way storage is selected and deployed to support those environments. This is impacting traditional storage markets, requiring storage infrastructure that is aligned with these new challenges," said Amita Potnis, research director, storage systems for IDC. "Gridstore’s software-defined approach to scale-out storage promises a positive disruption to the status quo with a unique and compelling solution for managing the unstoppable flux of data."
    
"It’s the end of big storage. The dynamics of enterprise storage requirements are changing and 30 year-old legacy technology doesn’t cut it anymore," said Kelly Murphy, CEO of Gridstore. "Web scale giants such as Amazon and Google have proven that. Gridstore is delivering the next generation scale-out storage for the software defined data center that can deliver the same scale, performance and affordability to the market.  Businesses no longer have to accept monolithical systems that are expensive and can’t scale. We are excited for the support of our new investors and the continued commitment of our existing investors will be instrumental as we enter the next phase of rapid growth and continued product innovation that is changing the dynamics of scale-out storage."