HPC and AI data center solutions provider, GigaIO, has completed a $14.7 million Series B round of investment. The financing round, which was oversubscribed by 50%, was headed by Impact Venture Capital and featured Mark IV Capital, Lagomaj Capital, SK Hynix, and Four Palms Ventures as participants.
With its headquarters in Carlsbad, California, GigaIO brings the flexibility of the cloud to AI and HPC infrastructures at a TCO that would be quite affordable. GigaIO removes the server box’s limitations by freeing resources and leveraging industry-standard PCI Express/soon CXL technology in its “revolutionary” open design, which uses FabreX, a dynamic infrastructure fabric. It allows data centers to increase or decrease the performance of their systems, enabling them to adapt to changing workloads and business requirements over time.
The global composable fabric from GigaIO is an open standards solution with infinite flexibility, cloudlike agility, and an extra layer of protection. Workloads would operate as if they were using components inside a single server, but they would harness the power of numerous nodes, all communicating inside a single seamless universal fabric, allowing for quicker outcomes.
GigaIO intends to use the additional funds to further its market and channel development efforts by bringing on new partners and extending existing channel initiatives. GigaIO will put additional resources into customer growth and partner development initiatives in order to speed up sales and marketing.
GigaIO FabreX
When using GigaIO’s Universal Composable Fabric, FabreX, any HPC or AI resource may be quickly configured on the fly and integrated into the fabric as a whole. GigaIO’s solution would decrease HPC and AI expenses by boosting utilization and reducing server needs, which may save on cooling, power, and footprint. GigaIO is revolutionizing the HPC and AI industry by democratizing access to pricey specialist resources such as accelerators and by making it simple for IT administrators to adopt.
“We have a tremendous technology and a development team with incredible expertise gained through years of working on some of the highest performing interconnects at companies such as Cray, Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Emulex, and QLogic,” said Alan Benjamin, President and CEO of GigaIO. “Today, by completing this funding round, we are better positioned to get the technology into the hands of more customers and channel partners and to increase traction among commercial and other customers.”
“Due to the pandemic, hardware testing has been difficult. Since the start of the year however, we’ve been able to get equipment into facilities and the results have been fantastic for us,” added Mr. Benjamin. “Our customers are thrilled with the results and impressed by what they can do with the technology, and to be blunt, they’re amazed that we’re getting results that the industry has been striving to achieve for more than a decade. With strong demand for a universal composable fabric, we’ve seen tremendous support from the investment community. The oversubscription provides a solid runway for future investments.”
Data and Storage Performance
PCIe Gen 4, a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, transfers data at high bandwidth and low latency across numerous components and is the technology used by computers, data centers, and the wireless sector to allow the next generation of mobile and desktop applications. With the same technique, data can be moved from storage to accelerators more rapidly and used more efficiently. With PCIe Gen 5 and CXL, GigaIO will be able to leverage pools of memory to build a shared, commonplace composable element.
“We are excited to lead this funding round, including a co-investment from SK Hynix, and believe that GigaIO’s game-changing technology and team will continue to revolutionize the way that organizations manage data,” said Jack Crawford, Founding General Partner at Impact Venture Capital. “We believe that the company is a catalyst for the next generation of data and storage performance and represents an ideal artificial intelligence startup that we seek to partner with and invest in.”
“Our further investment in GigaIO is rooted in our confidence that the power of HPC and AI can solve critical challenges at every level,” said Felix Williams, Founder and Managing Director of Lagomaj Capital. “The GigaIO team is working to enable the next generation of computational infrastructure, and we are proud to call them partners.”
“We are thrilled to partner with Alan and the entire GigaIO team on their journey to establish a new model for data center infrastructure,” said Michael Beaudoin, Director of Private Equities at Mark IV Capital. “By leveraging the power of a universal composable fabric, GigaIO is delivering a powerful solution, making HPC and AI more accessible to its customers.”
As of 2012, Joey Maitra founded GigaIO while still working at another firm. GigaIO became more than just a concept on a napkin when Alan Benjamin joined the company in 2017 and helped raise the company’s first round of funding, followed by a Series A round in 2018 sponsored by Mark IV Capital. FabreX, the company’s universal fabric interconnect, was released in 2019 and is currently tackling the democratization of HPC and AI.
