DataCore Secures $60 Million in Funding

DataCore Software Corp. achieved a significant milestone by raising $60 million in a financing round led by Vistara Growth, a provider of flexible growth capital to innovative technology companies.

This investment will enable DataCore to expand its technology offerings and operational agility, ensuring the company can effectively meet the evolving demands of modern data environments and infrastructure stacks. By broadening its market reach to tackle emerging use cases, the firm aims to support its customers and ensure their success across core, edge, and cloud environments.

With data volumes, complexities, and cyber threats on the rise, organizations are grappling with unprecedented challenges in data management. The vendor is set to leverage the infusion of new capital to advance its suite of storage solutions, with a concentrated effort on enhancing infrastructure and data resilience. The investment will fuel the integration of AI technologies, enabling businesses to extract actionable insights and streamline complex workflows through smart automation. Moreover, a continued focus on cybersecurity frameworks will help firm’s customers counter evolving threat vectors, providing more robust data protection safeguards.

John O’Donoghue, who led the investment for Vistara Growth, said: “As a pioneer in storage and infrastructure solutions, DataCore is well positioned to capitalize on the increasing data volumes generated by corporate digital transformations. We have seen first-hand how DataCore’s customers depend upon their flexible, hardware-agnostic solutions for critical, HA storage workflows, and we are excited to partner on their next phase of growth. DataCore’s track record of delivering cutting-edge infrastructure solutions is supported by 25 years of R&D and innovation further enhanced by strategic acquisitions.”

“This pivotal funding marks a new chapter in our commitment to our customers and partners, enabling us to deliver greater value through collaboration and innovation,” said Dave Zabrowski, CEO, DataCore. “With the strong support of Vistara Growth, we are poised to accelerate the development of intelligent and resilient solutions in the areas of new-age data infrastructures that not only address today’s data challenges but also pave the way for future advancements. Our goal is to empower businesses with the tools they need to thrive in an increasingly complex digital landscape, driving long-term success and creating sustainable impact.”

As DataCore embarks on this new chapter, the company is focused on fueling product innovation with transformative AI and cyber resilience solutions, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in data management. This forward-thinking strategy positions the company as a catalyst for progress, enabling organizations to modernize and futureproof their digital infrastructure and IT systems.

Comments

DataCore born in 1998 or more than a quarter of century, DataCore is not the oldest storage start-ups in the world, the oldest one being Vicom Systems, Inc. (Fremont, CA) born in 1982 and involved in virtualization software and hardware that was under Chapter XI in 2003 but restarted in 2006.

Financial rounds of DataCore
1998: $2 million
1998: $6 million (1st round)
2000: $35 million (2nd round)
2001: $37 million (3rd round)
2004: $7 million (4th round)
2005: MBO (60% employee owned)
2008: $35 million
2021: $9.7 million
2024: $60 million (5th round)
Total: $178.7 million over 5 rounds and 10 investors.

The company never wanted to be public. Why? Co-founder George S. Teixeira answered in an interview published in May 2014: "That is still the long-term plan yes, but I’m in no hurry because to create an IPO in the U.S you need to spend $7 to $10 million and I can use that money to build on the product or to invest right now."

Furthermore, it's always a surprise for a profitable company and a well established one like DataCore to announce a financial round. Here we understand that the strategy pushed since Dave Zabrowski arrived as CEO is to create value and prepare a big exit for the company. To make this happen acquisitions are key and this fresh money will fuel that move.

Acquisitions of DataCore
(no price revealed for all of them)

Year

Acquired company

Business of acquired company

1999

RTware

SRM software

2000

Demand Technology Software

Monitoring software systems

2021

Caringo

Object storage

2021

MayaData

Cross-cloud control plane for data, based Kubernetes and OpenEBS

2023

Object Matrix

Object storage pioneer and media archive specialist

2023

Workflow Intelligence Nexus

Seasoned workflow services and software firm

As written a few times, DataCore has made some strategic moves with Caringo, Object Matrix and Maya Data and a partnership with Hammerspace that finally ended a few quarters ago. The company also swallowed Workflow Intelligence Nexus, a vertical edge AI entity.

In this desire to go beyond block storage, file storage still appears as a miss and the management team knows that, will they pick one of the few gems in the domain, seen as key file server services with some key expertise in the Windows based environment to create some products convergence. It's key for the company to continue to build a wide comprehensive SDS portfolio.

But as AI and cyber-threat are so hot on the market, we could imagine some move in these directions. We'll see as Zabrowski is on a mission and he's approaching his famous 7 years of CEO position, 7 years at Neterion and 7 years at Cloud Cruiser.