Austin—Infinite.io announced Wednesday it has raised an additional $7.3 million in financing, bringing the data storage startup’s total financial haul to $10.3 million.
The new funding comes on top of $3 million raised two weeks ago, says Mark Cree, Infinite.io’s president and CEO. The round was led by former Motorola CEO and Cleversafe chairman Chris Galvin and David Galvin of Three Fish Capital and formerly of IBM (NYSE: [[ticker:IBM]]). Investment was also provided by Chicago Ventures, Dougherty and Company, Equus Holdings, PV Ventures, and individual investor John Anderson, according to a press release.
Cree says Infinite.io plans to use the funding to double the company’s headcount in the next six months from 15 employees currently. In addition to US offices on the East and West coasts, Infinite.io has a presence in Europe.
Infinite.io makes software that moves data that isn’t actively used to the cloud, while making it look and act as if it’s still stored on the local system in case a user needs to access that data for any reason. “For most people with a laptop, 80 percent of the data you’re [accessing] once or twice and never touch again,” Cree says.
Inactive data in the typical data center doubles at least every two years, and in 2017, organizations spent about $27 billion on new file storage for data that will remain inactive forever, the company states on its website.
Cree says Infinite.io provides a less expensive way to manage this infrequently needed data. The company’s software is installed like a network switch, which then migrates inactive data to low-cost cloud storage. Should such data become more actively needed and used, that data can be moved back to the local server. Infinite.io works with a number of cloud sources including AWS, IBM Cloud, and DellEMC, according to the company’s website.
Infinite.io’s software is being used by businesses in media and entertainment, genomics, and large-scale website development, as well as by government entities, according to the press release. “There isn’t a single enterprise that doesn’t have this problem,” Cree says.
