IT Appliance Startup SimpliVity Raises $58M to Expand Staff, Sales

SimpliVity, a Westborough, MA-based seller of IT appliances, has raised a $58 million Series C round to expand hiring and further compete with giants in the data storage and processing market, including EMC.

SimpliVity’s business is built around a device called the OmniCube, which is pitched as an all-in-one box that replaces several other pieces of hodgepodge IT infrastructure.

The company says one core feature is the OmniCube’s ability to eliminate duplicate data and compress the resulting files “once and forever,” making the resulting system much more efficient (and cheaper).

Chief executive and founder Doron Kempel started working on SimpliVity not long after selling a previous company, Diligent Technologies, to IBM in 2008. Kempel publicly unveiled SimpliVity last year.

The company doesn’t disclose its sales figures, but Kempel told Forbes that he expects SimpliVity’s staff to triple and its revenue to grow fivefold in 2014.

Kempel
Kempel

The fundraising announced today pushes SimpliVity’s total venture backing to about $101 million over its lifespan, making it one of the bigger tech-sector startup bets in the Boston region. Its last investment was a $25 million Series B round in September 2012.

The new investment was co-led by the growth-stage funds of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (a returning investor) and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, with several other investors also buying shares.

Author: Curt Woodward

Curt covered technology and innovation in the Boston area for Xconomy. He previously worked in Xconomy’s Seattle bureau and continued some coverage of Seattle-area tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft. Curt joined Xconomy in February 2011 after nearly nine years with The Associated Press, the world's largest news organization. He worked in three states and covered a wide variety of beats for the AP, including business, law, politics, government, and general mayhem. A native Washingtonian, Curt earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. As a past president of the state's Capitol Correspondents Association, he led efforts to expand statehouse press credentialing to online news outlets for the first time.