Semiconductor producer Nvidia acquired Excelero, a US-based flash storage technology developer backed by mobile chipmaker Qualcomm and data storage product manufacturer Western Digital, for an undisclosed amount on Monday.
Excelero has built a flash drive-focused management and security software tool dubbed NVMesh. The product supports large-scale cloud platforms including industrial internet-of-things, artificial intelligence (AI) and visual simulation applications.
The company disclosed this week it had raised an undisclosed amount from Mellanox Technologies, the networking equipment producer later acquired by Nvidia, shortly after it was founded in 2014.
Both Excelero and Mellanox have also worked on remote direct memory access storage, which allows one computer to use the memory of another without using either’s operating system. Nvidia will serve Excelero’s customers going forward and incorporate the latter’s technology into its own enterprise software offering.
Yaniv Romem, Excelero’s chief executive and co-founder, said: “The Excelero team is joining Nvidia as demand is surging for high-performance computing and AI.
“We will be working with Nvidia to ensure our existing customers are supported, and going forward we are thrilled to apply our expertise in block storage to Nvidia’s world-class AI and [high-performance computing] platforms.”
Excelero had raised a total of $35m as of 2018 when it secured $5m from investors including Western Digital Capital, a subsidiary of data storage product manufacturer Western Digital.
The deal came after a $25m series B round the previous year featuring Qualcomm Ventures, the investment arm of mobile chipmaker Qualcomm, in addition to semiconductor equipment producer Micron, Battery Ventures and an unnamed investor likely to be Mellanox.
