Israel-based data storage technology startup Pliops disclosed a $30m series B round on Wednesday led by SoftBank Ventures Asia, a corporate venturing subsidiary of telecommunications and internet group SoftBank.
Intel Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of semiconductor and data technology provider Intel, also took part in the round, as did data storage equipment producer Western Digital, computing technology provider Xilinx, State of Mind Ventures and Viola Ventures.
Founded in 2017, Pliops is developing storage processor technology to help data centres cope with the increasing data requirements caused by the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies.
In addition to expanding its US, Israel and China teams, Pliops will use funds from the round for product development. It had previously raised $10m in a hitherto unrevealed series A round featuring Intel Capital, State of Mind Ventures and Viola Ventures in October 2017.
Wendell Brooks, senior vice-president of Intel and president of Intel Capital, said: “Pliops’ core technology helps to accelerate the cloud and AI workloads that are driving the next wave of innovations.
“Intel is investing in numerous technologies to meet the rapidly growing storage and processing needs of the most challenging applications. This investment in Pliops advances Intel’s vision to develop the most efficient, scalable data centre solutions.”