Datacastle Closes $5.3M Series A Financing, Gets New Leadership

It’s been a busy week for data-protection companies around here. Two days after Decho was formed out of Seattle-based Pi and Utah-based Mozy, information security firm Datacastle of Seattle has announced a $5.3 million Series A financing round. The investment was led by the Australian venture firm CM Capital Investments. No other investors were disclosed.

The new venture investment comes with a reshuffling of Datacastle’s leadership and management team. Alex Knight, formerly of Edge Labs and Arch Venture Partners, will become Datacastle’s chairman of the board. Gary Sumner, Datacastle’s founding CEO, will step aside to become chief technology officer. And Ronald Faith, formerly of the mobile services and commerce companies Clonefone and Qpass, joins the company as chief executive.

Datacastle was founded in 2005 and raised a seed-stage round in July 2007. Its data-protection software, which is aimed at personal computers in businesses, does online backup, encryption, and reduction of storage space needed for files.

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.