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Skyera gets $51M in funding from Western Digital

Western Digital's investment arm makes a significant strategic investment in enterprise solid-state storage provider Skyera.

Rachel King Staff Writer
Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.
Rachel King

Western Digital Capital, the investment arm of the hard-drive giant, has revealed that it is pouring approximately $51 million into enterprise startup Skyera.

Having previously funded Skyera as the initial outside investor, Western Digital Capital co-invested in the series B round as the two storage solutions makers enter into a joint agreement.

While it wasn't revealed as to exactly what technology the two businesses are going to develop together, it will likely build upon Skyera's enterprise solid-state storage systems.

For example, Western Digital pointed towards Skyera's SkyHawk solid-state storage, which is priced at "an industry breakthrough price point" of less than $3 per gigabyte.

The launch of SkyHawk reportedly marks the first time that the latest generation of 19/20nm solid-state technology can be used as a direct replacement for traditional enterprise hard disk-based systems, according to the announcement.

Western Digital president and chief executive officer Steve Milligan did specify in prepared remarks that one of the primary goals for this deal is to build "highly optimized storage solutions" to meet changing data management needs.

Milligan also suggested that solid-state options from companies such as Skyera offer "a dramatic improvement over traditional approaches to emerging storage challenges."

This story originally appeared at ZDNet's Between the Lines under the headline "Western Digital investing $51M in solid-state storage maker Skyera."