Fusion-io Lands New Round Of Funding: Solid State Innovation Lives On

Fusion-io is probably one of the most important storage companies that you've never heard of. It won't be placed on Best Buy shelves beside Seagate, Western Digital or Hitachi, but in five years, it may be all the rage. Already, the start-up company (which has ties to Apple's Steve Wozniak) has delivered some of the fastest solid state storage on the planet, and it looks like the company is well on their way to doing that for some time to come.

Innovation takes dollars, and thankfully for Fusion-io, their bank account just got stuffed with them. The company has just announced that they have raised another $45 million in Series C financing, led by new investor Meritech Capital Partners, as well as previous investors. This new injection of cash will be directed towards scaling up infrastructure and support development of next-generation technologies and products. Funding will also support development of next generation technologies and products that will further distance the ioMemory Tier from the competition.

There's a good chance that this money could lead to even more ioMemory products, and hopefully these SSD solutions will arrive with lower price points than we've seen before. As it stands, most every Fusion-io product has been priced and aimed at the enterprise, but we're feeling pretty confident that the consumer space is on their to-reach list.

Fusion-io Raises $45 Million in Series C Financing to Accelerate Growth and Development of Next Generation Flash Technologies

Salt Lake City, April, 19, 2010— Fusion-io, creator of a new memory tier of flash-based solid-state (ioMemory), today announced that it has raised approximately $45 million in a Series C preferred stock financing, led by new investor, Meritech Capital Partners.  Also participating in the round were new investors, Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Triangle Peak Partners, as well as returning investors, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Lightspeed Venture Partners, among others.

Fusion-io will direct the additional investment towards scaling up infrastructure to support rapidly increasing sales and build on the momentum its flash-based memory tier is experiencing across multiple industries. Funding will also support development of next generation technologies and products that will further distance the ioMemory Tier from the competition.

"The money put into the company by this impressive list of investors demonstrates the value of our technology in the current marketplace," said Dennis Wolf, CFO of Fusion-io. "Our competition will no doubt take note and be appropriately concerned about the extent and rapidity of our growth."

“In only a couple of years Fusion-io has clearly demonstrated the disruptive, innovative nature of its technology. It is causing organizations around the globe to rethink the way they architect their data centers,” said George Bischof, Managing Director at Meritech Capital. “This round of funding will allow Fusion-io to maintain the rapid pace of innovation it has established. We are excited by the significant value proposition the company’s products are delivering to customers, as well as the improvements that will be enabled with the next generation of revolutionary technology from Fusion-io.”

About Fusion-io

Fusion-io is a leading provider of enterprise solid-state technology and high-performance I/O solutions. The company’s solid-state storage technology closes the gap between processing power and storage needs delivering breakthrough performance at a fraction of the cost of traditional disk-based storage systems. The result is a world of possibilities for performance-starved applications. For more information, please visit www.fusionio.com.