Flash storage startup Kaminario raises $75 million

Kaminario, a startup that sells all-flash storage hardware, today announced a $75 million funding round.

Founded in 2008, the Newton, Massachusetts-based startup carries out its research and development in Israel, where it has a team of engineers just outside of Haifa. Dani Golan, Kaminario’s founder and CEO, told VentureBeat in an interview: “There are three places today where storage technologies are being developed: Silicon Valley, the Boston area, and Israel. We have two out of three, which is not bad!”

Kaminario, which released its product in 2014, provides hardware, software, and services for companies’ data centers, both in private clouds and public clouds. The product is built from the ground up for all-flash, as opposed to transforming existing legacy hard disk drive-based products to flash. The hardware, software, and services start at $200,000.

Customers, which according to Golan are in the hundreds, include Priceline, Telefónica, and Nuance Communications. Kaminario’s competitors range from scrappers like Pure Storage, Nimble Storage, and NetApp’s SolidFire to enterprise storage giants like Hitachi, HP, and Golan’s former employer, EMC. “We are at the heart of what I consider the two most significant revolutions in IT in the last two decades,” said Golan. “One is the cloud and the other is flash.”

Hong Kong-based private equity firm Waterwood led this latest round of funding. New investor CE Ventures, along with existing investors Sequoia Capital, Pitango Venture Capital, Lazarus, Silicon Valley Bank, and Globespan Capital Partners, also joined. The new money will be used to expand globally and further product development. Kaminario currently has 235 employees.