Venture investors are betting big on the disruptive effect of flash memory on the enterprise data storage market. Half of the nearly $2B of funding to the space has gone to 10 private companies.
The arrival of flash memory in the enterprise storage space has significantly quickened the ability to read and write data over traditional spinning disks. And venture capital investors are keen to cash in on the trend pouring over $1.9B into 50 flash storage-related startups since 2007.
Interestingly, those dollars concentrate heavily among just a handful of flash storage startups. In fact, just 10 flash storage companies have raised more than $940 million through June 2013 accounting for 50% of aggregate funding to the space. Among these companies are Violin Memory, which is said to have filed for an IPO under the Jumpstart Act in October, and Nimble Storage, a Tech IPO Pipeline candidate backed by the likes of Accel Partners and Sequioa Capital.
Within the flash storage space, Lightspeed Venture Partners is clearly the investor most bullish on the space. After previous portfolio exits in the storage space including EMC’s $430M acquisition of XtremIO and FusionIO’s IPO, Lightspeed currently holds investments in five private flash storage-related companies