Memblaze Raises Series D $30 Million

Beijing Memblaze Technology Co., Ltd. announced the closure of its Series D fundraising round.

Led by venture capital firm SoftBank Ventures Asia, the round also includes participation from Toyou. This is the second time the provider of storage solutions has participated. The new funds, totaling about $30 million, will give a boost to firm’s presence in the enterprise NVMe SSD field, enabling it to meet higher requirements for storage and management from emerging areas such as 5G and AI. Earlier investors of the company include Infinity Group, Bertelsmann Asia Investments, Ding Xing Venture Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Tencent and Microsemi.

Technologies like 5G, AI, IoT, and edge computing are booming, and so are new infrastructure projects. To deal with a deluge of data that comes with their arrival, SSD products have proven essential for sustaining necessary computational power.

Founded in 2011, Beijing-based Memblaze is among the earliest developers of enterprise SSD products. Its PBlaze series SSDs have entered a range of areas such as databases, virtualization, cloud computing, and big data. Speedy storage products boasting stability and reliability are serving more than 600 enterprises across various industries, including the Internet, cloud services, finance, and telecommunications.

Zhibo Tang,co-founder and CEO, said: “The latest capital increase looks to give Memblaze a bigger edge in the SSD market facing businesses. It offers an opportunity to introduce our storage and processing solutions to smart scenarios more quickly. With years of technological experience and deep insights into users, Memblaze will work to make its products better suit their needs. At the same time, we will also continue cooperation with partners leading the global industrial chains, and join hands with them in building a global ecosystem of storage, to push forward the whole industry’s development.“

Jason Ding, partner, SoftBank Ventures Asia, said: “When selecting investment targets, we prioritize high-tech companies that have demonstrated business models and long-term growth potential. Over the past decade, Memblaze has emerged as a key vendor in the China enterprise SSD market. With a well-established R&D organization dedicated to innovation, Memblaze has formed long term strategic partnerships with suppliers around the world, delivered multiple gens of reliable products in mass production, and earned the trust of a broad base of customers in verticals including Internet, cloud, telco and FSI. These achievements had strengthened our conviction in the investment. The data center expansion driven by cloud, 5G and AI, as well as the seismic shifts in the memory semiconductor industry, present an unprecedented opportunity for Memblaze to grow to the next level. We are excited to partner with Memblaze in embarking on the journey of transforming the enterprise IT infrastructure.”

Zexiang Zhou, president and GM, Toyou, said: “SSD products, as core basic components of data centers, are extremely important for processing and management of storage. Memblaze’s position as the core provider in China’s enterprise SSD market fits well with our strategic layout in the entire storage industry ranging ‘from chips to systems’. Our investment in Memblaze for the second time represents our recognition of its technological competence and development prospects. And it’s our hope that both can innovate in rolling out more safe and reliable products suitable for different scenarios to drive forward the storage market.“

Even since its inception, Memblaze has been working on independent R&D. The efforts have paid off with a number of technologies patented at home and abroad, including in SSD front-end development, flash memory management and access, OSs and testing, and design of storage software and hardware.

Memblaze is playing a role in the industrial chain on the strength of its new technologies and safe and reliable products. Their combination has yielded results this year so far, grabbing attention and earning praise from the media including China Central Television (CCTV).

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Chinese SSD Maker Memblaze Completes Series C Funding
Of “tens of millions of US dollars,” after $20 million last year
December 23, 2015 | Press Release