Additional strategic investments will fuel data center and new market expansion
Wasabi, the hot cloud storage company, announced $25 million in additional funding led by Prosperity7 Ventures, the diversified growth fund of Aramco Ventures. Western Digital Capital, the investment arm of storage device manufacturer Western Digital, also participated in the round. This round is an extension of Wasabi’s Series C financing announced in April, expanding the total funding raised for the round to $137 million and the company’s total equity financing to $244 million.
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This latest round of funding comes as Wasabi reported 3x year-over-year growth, reaching 23,000 customers worldwide and over 5,000 Channel Partners and 350 Technology Alliance Partners. The additional capital will be used to further accelerate Wasabi’s worldwide roll-out of data centers and to grow the company’s distribution channels and partner network while continuing to build a team to support this rapid expansion.
“I am delighted to have these two new strategic investors,” said Wasabi CEO & Co-Founder, David Friend. “We have been using Western Digital disk drives since the founding of the company. Their investment in Wasabi reflects the fact that data storage in the cloud is accelerating and that there is a growing interdependence between our companies. As for Aramco, we see the energy sector as a huge potential market for cloud storage and to have the VC Fund of the world’s largest energy company invest in Wasabi couldn’t be timelier. We are also interested in the Middle East as a potential market in general.”
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Wasabi’s low-cost, high-performance cloud storage is enabling companies to cut their data storage costs by 75% or more. Data-intensive industries, such as energy and exploration, are making extensive use of AI to extract value from their data. But the cost of storing large amounts can make some of these AI-based applications difficult to justify. Reducing the cost of cloud data storage by 75% or more changes the equation and facilitates more rapid development of data-rich AI applications.
“Companies like Aramco are sitting on mountains of exploration and operational data. Energy, medical imaging and diagnostics, genomics, surveillance and finance are among many industries that are profiting from the use of AI. The thing to remember, however, is that the value of AI is completely dependent on having a rich source of data. That’s why a company like Wasabi is a natural fit with a company like Aramco,” continued Friend.
“Wasabi changes the economics of data storage,” said Aysar Tayeb, Executive Managing Director of Prosperity7 Ventures. “There is undisputed massive growth of data generated from almost everything we do, and this will intensify with more 5G, smart cities, IoT, and many other applications. Bringing a solution to the market that offers a significantly lower-cost storage option, at scale, is a timely necessity. We are excited about the value proposition of Wasabi and are pleased to support its vision to store as much of the world’s data as possible”.
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“IDC forecasts that the public cloud IaaS market will grow more than 30% annually in 2021, as enterprises move toward post-pandemic recovery and operation; while also prioritizing strategic goals around digital transformation and IT modernization,” said Andrew Smith, Research Manager, Cloud Infrastructure Services for IDC. “This growth of the cloud infrastructure market is pervasive across all geographies, including EMEA, where we forecast the market will expand at a 28% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next four years.”
“In the future, most of the world’s data will live in the cloud,” said Daniel Flynn, President and Treasurer, Western Digital Capital. “We’ve partnered and invested with Wasabi because its mission – to store data in the cloud – aligns with our strategy to partner with cloud customers to provide the foundational technologies underpinning the global data infrastructure. We are excited to help fuel continued growth and global data center build-out as Wasabi revolutionizes the cloud market.”
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