Tech investors are bullish on enterprise flash storage.
Pure Storage today announced that it had raised $225 million in a Series F round of funding, bringing its valuation to $3 billion. To date, the Mountain View, Calif.-based data storage startup has raised $470 million.
“Pure’s hefty valuation reinforces the overall health and unprecedented growth in our business to date,” said Pure Storage CEO Scott Dietzen in a blog post. More importantly, he added, the $3 billion figure “reflects the hugely disruptive impact that an AFA [all-flash array] that costs less than disk will have in the years to come.”
But don’t expect an IPO anytime soon. “We remain convinced that Pure’s opportunity is to build the next great storage company, and staying private for now affords us the greatest flexibility in continuing to make the right long term investments and to fend off prospective acquirers,” argued Dietzen.
The company, which emerged from “stealth mode” in 2011, specializes in all-flash arrays that are packed with solid-state drives (SSDs), improving application performance by up to 10x compared to disk-based storage systems. The company’s aptly named FlashArray hardware offers built-in deduplication and compression and squeezes SLC-like longevity out of consumer-grade MLC-based SSDs.
In February, the company launched a new maintenance model called Forever Flash. Under the new program, customers are entitled to free controller upgrades every three years when they renew their maintenance agreements in years four or seven. Additionally, controller and capacity upgrades reset their maintenance to first year rates.
Pure Storage’s approach to the market is catching on with both customers and the venture capital community.
In an email to InfoStor, a spokesperson pointed out the company’s blistering rate of growth. “Pure Storage is the fastest growing storage company in history, and has achieved 700% [year-over-year] growth, and consistent 50+% sequential quarterly growth.” Last year, the firm shipped its 1,000th FlashArray.
The latest financing round included new investor Wellington Management Company, along with T. Rowe Price Associates and Tiger Global. Previous participants, including Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures, also contributed funds.
Pure Storage plans to use the fresh infusion of capital to fuel its international expansion and “meet insatiable global demand for the Pure Storage FlashArray,” the company said in a statement.
“In 2014, no one should be buying mechanical disk to run databases or virtual machines,” said Dietzen in a statement. “Our additional funding ensures that many more businesses will get the ten-fold performance acceleration and power savings of Pure Storage.”