History 2005: Financial Funding of Storage Start-Ups

• At the end of April, Egenera, into blade server virtualization, secured $45 million in debt financing and decided in May to withdraw its pending June IPO due to market conditions. Since its founding in 2000, the start-up has raised $169 million in 5 rounds.
• SAN start-up Compellent Technologies raised $15 million in a third round to help extend international operations. The company has secured $38 million since its inception in 2002.
• Zetera has closed a $13.5 million Series A funding. It has meanwhile patented a low-cost technology to use IP as the storage fabric, recently adopted by Bell Micro, NetGear and StorCASE.
• Data replication firm Topio, formerly Sanpro Systems, has secured an $8 million round of venture financing. Total funding is now $21 million.
• Bayer Material Science AG, a major producer of polymers, is one of the newest leading investors in a $32.1 milion third financial round for holographic firm inPhase Technologies, in exchange for the granting of a license for the development and supply of raw materials for the production of optical storage media. Another new investor is Nanotech Partners, which has commitments from Mitsubishi Chemical, along with former investors Hitachi Maxell and Alps.
• D2D backup company IntraDyn, headquartered in Eagan, MA, has received $2 million in new financing, half on money coming from an economic development package from Mason City, IA, where its new assembly operations will be based.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 209 on June 2005 from the former paper version of Computer Data  Storage Newsletter.