US and London-based WhipTail has closed a $31 million (£19.2 million) investment round led by SanDisk, with additional contributions coming from Ignition Partners, RRE Ventures and Spring Mountain Capital.
The transaction represents the first venture deal completed by SanDisk’s new venture capital initiative. The $75 million SanDisk Ventures fund has been tasked with investing in start-ups that are developing ‘innovative’ products based on flash memory storage.
Its investment in WhipTail, which designs energy-efficient enterprise infrastructure equipment using flash memory technology, will help the technology firm grow its engineering team and boost global expansion.
Dan Crain, CEO of WhipTail, says that the new investors added to the business show the confidence that the firms have in company’s vision.
He adds, ‘This funding will ensure continued growth of WhipTail and accelerate our product roadmap through 2013, with groundbreaking products coming over the next 12 months that will leave our competition scrambling to catch up.’
WhipTail ‘s last funding round came back in January 2012 when its Series B round netted it an undisclosed amount. The transaction was led by RRE Ventures, with participation from Ignition Partners and Spring Mountain Capital.
To coincide the venture capital fundraising, WhipTail has appointed former CFO of Virtue and Liason Technologies Catherine Chandler to its executive team.
Crain comments, ‘Cathy comes to us with a strong background in tech and manufacturing, two areas where her fiscal leadership will pay strong dividends for WhipTail.’
SanDisk says its venture cash will be targeting next-generation solid-state memory technology and cloud-based computing advances.
‘Enterprise storage represents a significant growth opportunity for flash, and SanDisk is excited to invest in innovative companies such as WhipTail, which are bringing breakthrough system solutions to their enterprise customers,’ says Sumit Sadana, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at SanDisk.
‘Increasingly, customers are turning to flash-based solutions to address the need to access big data at lightning-fast speed, and do so with elegant, scalable, power-efficient systems from leading companies like WhipTail.’
More on corporate venturing:
