CNEX Labs, a private semiconductor company based in San Jose, California, closed its Series C round of financing led by Microsoft Ventures and joined by existing CNEX investors, bringing total funding to over $60 million to date.
CNEX is developing solid-state storage controllers and software for cloud, hyperscale, and enterprise data centers.
The company said it is working with tier-one data center customers and manufacturers of solid-state storage, including NAND flash and other storage media, to create a ground-up re-design of the traditional SSD controller architecture.
“CNEX is developing the next big innovation for solid-state storage through semiconductor and software solutions,” said Nagraj Kashyap, corporate vice president at Microsoft Ventures. “As data generation grows, so too must storage systems. Our support will help CNEX accelerate its contribution to new breakthroughs in the evolution toward a cloud-first world.”
“We place a high value on the expertise that comes with this commitment from Microsoft Ventures,” said Alan Armstrong, CEO and Co-Founder of CNEX Labs. “The industry sees impressive leadership from Microsoft in shaping a new generation of data centers, and the strategic guidance from Microsoft Ventures will be a key asset to CNEX as we launch our storage products into mass production for the global data center ecosystem.”
Worldwide data generation is expected to leap from four zettabytes per year in 2013 to 40 zettabytes per year by 2020 (one zettabyte is one billion terabytes). The sheer volume, variety, and velocity of data is driving the need for innovation in data center technology to store and deliver this data.
