Software-defined storage provider DataCore is buying the Arcastream parallel file business from French supplier Kalray.
Startup Kalray was founded in 2008 as a fabless semiconductor business spun off from CEA, the French Atomic Energy Commission. It developed MPPA (Massively Parallel Processing Array) chip and card technology, and a data processing unit (DPU) accelerator. It bought all the shares of UK-based Arcapix in January 2022 for around €1 million ($1 million) and gained its software-defined Arcastream storage intended for data-intensive workloads.
Arcastream is unified system that combines IBM Storage Scale-based software, flash, disk, tape, and cloud storage. Now Kalray is offloading all of its Arcastream assets, including the Ngenea business, to DataCore. Customers include Framestore, Red Bee Media, and Imperial College London, and Arcastream has an ongoing partnership with Dell.
Dave Zabrowski, CEO at DataCore, said in a statement: “Integrating robust file storage capabilities into our portfolio, this acquisition reinforces our role as a universal storage leader – offering block, file, and object storage to support workflows seamlessly across core, edge, and cloud environments.”
DataCore inherits Arcastream’s agreement with Dell, in which its software is integrated into the Dell EMC Ready Solution for HPC PixStor Storage.
Arcastream software is generally sold to customers in entertainment, media, academia and HPC markets
In July last year, DataCore raised $60 million to “fuel the integration of AI technologies”. In theory, there is an AI opportunity with Arcastream to feed data to LLMs. If these occur at edge sites, then DataCore’s Perifery business could also benefit.
Kalray is also looking to sell its Ngenea Data Acceleration Platform business, which includes its DPU processors and acceleration cards and associated software. In June last year, merger talks between Kalray and Israeli accelerator card and software startup Pliops were called off. No buyer has yet been announced for the DPU business.
The Arcastream acquisition price was disclosed in a Kalray release saying it’s up to $20 million with $12.5 million cash, a $2.5 million service contract and potential $5 million earn-out.
