Western Digital Capital, the investment arm of Irvine-based storage products maker Western Digital Corp., has led a $20 million funding round for a Pittsburgh cloud storage provider.
The Series D investment round in Avere Systems also included previous backers Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and Tenaya Capital.
The funding will be used to boost sales, marketing and development of the company’s hybrid cloud storage offering, according to Avere.
Its software-based technology is billed as incorporating several types of storage designs customized to handle smaller workloads to heavy enterprise data transfer and storage.
The latest development highlights Western Digital’s strides to invest in newer technologies that could be leveraged along with the string of buys the company made last year.
A trio of solid-state drive maker acquisitions bolstered its local operation, strengthened its position in attracting key corporate customers, and solidified its entry into the growing server and storage market that came with its $4.8 billion takeover of San Jose-based Hitachi Global Technologies Ltd. two years ago.
It paid $340 million for Santa Ana-based sTec Inc. and $685 million for Milpitas-based Virident Systems Inc. and acquired Lincoln, Mass.-based VeloBit Inc. on undisclosed terms.
Western Digital, the world largest disk drive maker in units sold and revenue, is an emerging player in the higher-margin solid-state drive market.
Its shares are up 2% in afternoon trading to a market value of about $22.6 billion. Investors may have seized upon a rosy outlook from Evercore Partners, which raised its revenue and profit targets on Thursday for Western Digital and its Cupertino rival, Seagate Technology Plc.
