GigaIO Raises $14.7 Million in Series B, Total at $19.2 Million

GigaIO Networks, Inc., creator of next-gen data center rack-scale architecture for AI and HPC solutions, announced the completion of a series B round of funding totaling $14.7 million.

Impact Venture Capital led the funding round, which was oversubscribed by 50% and included participation from Mark IV Capital, Lagomaj Capital, SK hynix, and Four Palms Ventures, LLC.

GigaIO has changed the HPC and AI landscape by creating an enterprise, universal composable fabric – an open standards solution with limitless flexibility, cloudlike agility, and an added layer of security. This enables faster time to achieve results as workloads run as if they were using components inside one server but harness the power of many nodes, all communicating within one seamless universal fabric.

Through the new funding, the firm will expand its market and channel development by recruiting more partners and expanding channel programs. It will devote more resources to customer development and partner development programs – aimed at accelerating sales and marketing efforts.

GigaIO’s Universal Composable Fabric, FabreX, orchestrates workloads by configuring any HPC and AI resource on the fly and integrating networking, storage, memory, and specialized accelerators into a single-system cluster fabric. By increasing the flexibility and agility of HPC and AI environments, the solution reduces costs through increased utilization and minimized server requirements, saving on cooling, power, and footprint. The company is disrupting the HPC and AI space by democratizing access to expensive specialized resources such as accelerators by sharing them across users and workloads, and by making it simple to implement for IT managers.

“We have a tremendous technology and a development team with incredible expertise gained through years of working on some of the highest performing interconnects at companies such as Cray, Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Emulex, and QLogic,” said Alan Benjamin, president and CEO. “Today, by completing this funding round, we are better positioned to get the technology into the hands of more customers and channel partners and to increase traction among commercial and other customers.“

He continues: “Due to the pandemic, hardware testing has been difficult. Since the start of the year however, we’ve been able to get equipment into facilities and the results have been fantastic for us. Our customers are thrilled with the results and impressed by what they can do with the technology, and to be blunt, they’re amazed that we’re getting results that the industry has been striving to achieve for more than a decade. With strong demand for a universal composable fabric, we’ve seen tremendous support from the investment community. The oversubscription provides a solid runway for future investments.“

PCIe Gen 4, a fast serial computer expansion bus standard that moves data at high bandwidth and low latency between multiple components, is the technology computers, data centers, and the wireless industry rely on to enable the next gen of mobile and desktop applications. The same technology will also enable the efficient use of accelerators, including moving data out of storage and into accelerators more quickly. With PCIe Gen 5 and CXL, GigaIO will be able to extend to make use of pools of memory to create a shareable, commonplace composable element.

Jack Crawford, founding general partner, Impact Venture Capital, adds: “We are excited to lead this funding round, including a co-investment from SK Hynix, and believe that GigaIO’s game-changing technology and team will continue to revolutionize the way that organizations manage data. We believe that the company is a catalyst for the next gen of data and storage performance and represents an ideal AI start-up that we seek to partner with and invest in.”

“Our further investment in GigaIO is rooted in our confidence that the power of HPC and AI can solve critical challenges at every level,” said Felix Williams, founder and MD, Lagomaj Capital. “The GigaIO team is working to enable the next gen of computational infrastructure, and we are proud to call them partners.“

“We are thrilled to partner with Alan and the entire GigaIO team on their journey to establish a new model for data center infrastructure,” said Michael Beaudoin, director of private equities, Mark IV Capital. “By leveraging the power of a universal composable fabric, GigaIO is delivering a powerful solution, making HPC and AI more accessible to its customers.”

Headquartered in Carlsbad, CA, GigaIO was incorporated in 2012 by Joey Maitra, then employed elsewhere, but was mostly an idea on a napkin until Alan Benjamin joined the company in 2017 and raised the first seed round of investment, followed by a series A round in 2018 led by Mark IV Capital. The first product line was launched in 2019, and the company is now taking on the democratizing of HPC and AI through FabreX.