Seagate dumps $40M into Flash-storage startup Virident

Today, hard drive giant Seagate announced it’s investing a huge $40 million chunk of change in Virident, a startup focused on Flash storage.

With the investment, Seagate will buy itself a board seat as well as the advantages of a “strategic partnership” with the younger company.

A rep for the companies said via email that as of the deal’s announcement, Seagate will immediately start selling a complete line of Flash-based technologies to its other partners (including OEMs), and Virident will be using Seagate’s ample marketing and distribution channels. Both companies will collaborate on next-gen hardware and software designs.

“This partnership validates Virident’s vision of pervasive flash in the performance tier and accelerates our shared vision by bringing next-generation SCM solutions to the enterprise and web datacenters worldwide.” said Virident CEO Mike Gustafson in a statement on the news.

Seagate’s heavy investment in Flash storage was also made evident in last year’s acquisition of LaCie (a French storage-focused company) and its investment in DensBits, an Israeli company that makes “Memory Modem, a revolutionary technology created to address the ever-increasing need for low-cost, high-performance NAND Flash-based storage systems.”

Virident, based in Milpitas, Calif., was founded in 2006. To date, the company has taken $103.7 million in four rounds of institutional funding. Previous investors include Sequoia Capital, Intel, and Cisco.