Foothill Ranch-based Aristos Logic Corp. has raised $12 million in a new round of venture funding, bringing its total raised to an eye-catching $65 million.
That makes Aristos, a maker of chips and boards for data storage devices, one of the best-funded technology startups in Orange County.
Aristos designs chips that speed the flow of data over storage networks,groups of computers used by banks, Internet companies, retailers and government agencies to store and retrieve data.
JP Morgan Partners, TPG Ventures, Woodside Fund and QTV Capital,all prior investors,led the latest round.
Aristos plans to use the money to produce its first chips and software products, which are based on a storage method called RAID, short for redundant array of independent disks.
“We’re ramping up our volume production right now,” said Adam Zagorski, Aristos’ vice president of marketing.
The company contracts with Milpitas-based LSI Logic Corp. for production of its chips.
Aristos also plans to use some of the new funding for research and development.
“We are pleased with Aristos Logic’s progress and believe that the company is well positioned to capitalize on the industry’s transition,” Vikram Gupta of JP Morgan Partners said in a statement.
Aristos has been touting itself to Wall Street investors. This year it has made presentations at conferences put on by RBC Capital Markets and JP Morgan & Co.
Anil Gupta, chief executive of Aristos, also has joined the board of Maranti Networks Inc., a Silicon Valley storage startup.
Aristos seems to have a good story to tell.
Storage startups,software, computers or chips,have been a hot ticket this year.
Datallegro Inc. of Aliso Viejo grabbed $6 million in a first round of venture funding in August from Santa Monica-based Palomar Ventures and Venrock Associates of Menlo Park.
The company makes software for storing and searching data. Datallegro plans to use the funding to launch its software.
Avamar Technologies Inc. raised $15 million last month. Irvine-based Avamar makes software that lets businesses easily back up large amounts of data.
Venture capitalists like the management at Aristos,nearly all of whom have a local pedigree.
Many of Aristos’ top officials hail from Lake Forest disk drive maker Western Digital Corp., with the exception of Chief Financial Officer Fred Barnes, who worked for Tustin-based VillageEDOCS Inc., and Joe Colgate, vice president of sales, who worked for Vixel Corp., now a part of Costa Mesa’s Emulex Corp.
Western Digital still owns part of Aristos but is not a venture backer of the company. Aristos broke off due to Western Digital’s strategy to split off some of its internal business to focus on the disk drive market.
