After Raising Over $220 Million, Flash Storage Startup Kaminario Shifts to Software

Flash storage company Kaminario Inc. is exiting the hardware business, pivoting instead to a software-based business model, the Israel-based company announced Wednesday. Kaminario also announced it had entered a strategic partnership with U.S.-based multinational IT company Tech Data Corporation, a global technology distributor, to build the hardware required to run Kaminario software.

For daily updates, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here.

Founded in 2008 by Israeli-born entrepreneur Dani Golan, Kaminario develops and markets all-flash storage arrays for databases, data mining, business intelligence, and web applications. The company raised more than $220 million in equity investments to date, including a $75 million F Round from investors including Sequoia Capital and Israel-based Pitango Venture Capital. Headquartered in Needham, Massachusetts, the company has additional offices in Israel, New York, and Silicon Valley. It employs around 220 people according to LinkedIn data.

Kaminario CEO Dani Golan. Photo: PR

“The cloud computing paradigm and demand for automated data centers are changing the nature of enterprise IT,” Dani Golan, CEO of Kaminario, said in a statement. “This business model shift, enabled by our partnership with Tech Data, positions us to deliver the economics and flexible consumption models that cloud providers need with absolutely no compromises on our well-proven technology capability.”

The company is not planning to lay off hardware engineers following the pivot, a company spokesman said in an email sent to Calcalist on Friday. Kaminario will continue providing hardware integration, service, and support, the company spokesman said.