Qumulo has raised $125m in an E-series round at a valuation of $1.2bn.
This takes total funding to $351m for the data storage startup, which was founded in 2012. Qumulo will spend the new cash on global expansion, strategic partnerships and product development.
Qumulo’s pitch is that it sits at the intersection of two mega trends, namely the digitalisation of our world and the advent of cloud computing. Organisations are using more file data and need faster access and they are increasingly looking to put their file stores in the public cloud.
CEO Bill Richter said in prepared statement that Qumulo manages more than 150 billion customer files. “This latest investment is a great recognition of our category leadership … We see rapidly increasing demand driven from content creators spanning artists creating Hollywood blockbusters, to researchers solving global pandemics, to engineers putting rockets into space.”
Qumulo competition
Dell EMC with PowerScale (formerly known as Isilon) and NetApp are the dominant mainstream enterprise file storage suppliers. Qumulo, started by Isilon veterans, competes for this business, and claims greater performance, more scale and better public cloud and management facilities.
Qumulo competitor WekaIO is a software-only startup, founded in 2013, that has raised $66.7m. It provides parallel access, high performance computing filesystem software, and has racked up OEM deals with Cisco, Dell EMC, Hitachi Vantara, HPE, Lenovo and Penguin Computing.
Google is also a competitor, thanks to its 2019 acquisition of Elastifile.
