AAA Virident raises $26m in Series D round, hires new CEO

Virident raises $26m in Series D round, hires new CEO

US-based enterprise flash storage company Virident has concluded a $26m series D round led by Mitsui Global Investments, and hires former BlueArc CEO, Mike Gustafson, as chief executive officer.

The round was led by Mitsui Global Investments and included venture capital (VC) firms Globespan Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital and Artiman Ventures. The conclusion of this latest round brings Virident’s total funding to $76m.

Three of the four firms involved were previous Virident investors. Artiman participated from Series A onwards, and Sequoia and Globespan from series B onwards.

The three VC firms all contributed to Virident’s Series C round last November. That round raised $21m and was led by Globespan Capital Partners with additional capital provided by tech giants Cisco, and Intel via its corporate venturing fund Intel Capital.

Virdent‘s previous series A and B rounds concluded in February and November 2010. The series A round raised $12.5m and included Artiman and flash memory chipmaker Spansion, while Globespan and Sequoia co-led the $12.7m Series B round with additional funding provided by Artiman.

In a statement Sanjay Pichaiah, investment director at Mitsui Global Investment said: “The flash storage market is predicted to grow to $4 billion by 2015, and this investment only strengthens our conviction that Virident will become the primary industry provider of the fastest storage class memory solutions to the world’s leading enterprise datacenters.”

Additionally Virident has brought on Mike Gustafson as chief executive officer (CEO) and board member. Gustafson served as president and CEO of network storage device manufacturer BlueArc from 2005 until it was acquired by Hitachi in September 2011, after which he became senior vice president and general manager for one of Hitachi’s divisions.

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