Lightbits Labs, a start-up based in San Jose, California focused on NVMe over TCP (NVMe/TCP) software-defined storage, raised $42 million in growth capital, bringing total raised to over $100 million in funding since its founding in 2016.
Lightbits eliminates storage complexities, unlike other NVM Express over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) implementations that require Fibre Channel or RDMA via the RoCE protocol, with specialized network interface cards and drivers.
The funding round was led by new investor Atreides Management, alongside J.P. Morgan, Valor Equity Partners, Eyal Ofer’s O.G. Tech, founder and chairman of Pacific Century Group (PCG) Richard Li, existing investors, and others.
“In today’s data-driven market, enterprise and data center customers are increasingly focused on achieving superior performance, scalability, and economics. Lightbits has established itself as a clear leader in disaggregated storage solutions—poised to meet accelerated customer demand with its cloud-native data platform. We are excited to partner with the Lightbits team at a critical stage in the company’s growth trajectory,” said Gavin Baker, Manager Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Atreides Management.
“The unprecedented events of the past two years and the impact of strained supply chains, have organizations thinking differently about their data infrastructure, rapidly accelerating the adoption of cloud solutions. There is tremendous pressure on Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and IT Organizations with private clouds to profitably keep pace with growing business demand while providing fast, resilient, and secure services,” said Avigdor Willenz, Co-Founder and Chairman of Lightbits Labs. “Lightbits invented NVMe/TCP and has led the way in defining a cloud-native storage architecture that is simple, agile, and efficient. Delivering these benefits significantly improves the competitive advantage of our enterprise customers. This investment and our continued growth are validation of our strategy, our incredible team, and our mission to lead the cloud-native data center transformation by delivering scalable and efficient software-defined storage that is easy to consume.”
