Pure Storage closes $150m pre-IPO round

Led by T. Rowe Price, Tiger Global Management and other public market investors, with the full support of its previous venture capital investors Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Samsung Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures, the new funding brings the company’s total capital raise to $245 million and puts the all-flash storage pioneer on-track for a future initial public offering (IPO). Pure Storage will use the new funding to accelerate continued expansion of its European and Asia-based operations, grow its sales, support and marketing teams worldwide, and increase its investments in research and development.

Pure Storage also announced today that former Data Domain CEO Frank Slootman has joined its board of directors. A revered veteran of the enterprise data storage and software industries, Slootman was one of the company’s earliest supporters and angel investors, which also include VMware’s cofounders: former CEO Diane Green and former CTO Mendel Rosenblum. He helmed Data Domain from its market entry through IPO; he currently serves as CEO of ServiceNow. Slootman will now take a more hands-on role with Pure Storage, as a key strategic advisor guiding it to a successful IPO.

“Pure Storage is experiencing much of what we did at Data Domain,” said Slootman. “They're replacing one storage media (disk) with another (flash), they pioneered the use of inline data reduction to remove the cost hurdle for the media upgrade, and, as a result of being the first to get this right, they are growing about as fast as companies can grow organically. Glad to be able to offer my own perspective in driving and managing growth to the excellent board of directors and leadership team at Pure.”

Flash Forward: Becoming the Fastest Growing Storage Company In History
Emerging from stealth only two years ago with a vision to disrupt the incumbent status quo, Pure Storage has rocked the storage industry with its breakthrough approach that combines proprietary data deduplication and compression technologies with affordable multi-level cell (MLC) flash memory to deliver an enterprise-grade all-flash storage array for less than the cost of mechanical disk. In the process, the company has pioneered a thriving new market category and set a new industry standard for enterprise storage excellence.

“We are very selective in the private companies that we choose to invest in,” said Henry Ellenbogen of T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. “In our view, Pure represents a rare combination of disruptive innovation, strong leadership, and strong growth. In particular, customer references were excellent. We look forward to working with Pure as they scale and strive toward becoming a public company.”

Since releasing its flagship FlashArray to general availability (GA) in 2012, Pure Storage has achieved over 50-percent consecutive quarterly growth, surpassing previous industry growth benchmarks set by NetApp and Data Domain to make it the fastest growing storage company in the industry’s history.

Now, with hundreds of units shipped and its third generation FlashArray GA and in production across a diverse global customer install base, the company is democratizing enterprise storage and delivering on its promise of ‘Flash for All': Flash for all enterprise applications and performance workloads, flash for all industries, and flash for all customer sizes and budgets.

“Paylocity’s mission is to help our clients move from the backroom to the boardroom. To achieve this, we rely on the most advanced, best of breed technologies available to deliver a truly seamless and transformative solution for our customers,” said Brian Palmer, Vice President of Information Technology at Paylocity. “Our modern, fully virtualized data center architecture used to rely on disk-based storage solutions. Utilizing the Pure Storage FlashArray, we have converted our systems and become an all-flash enterprise. The benefits and efficiencies have been immediate and tangible: we have realized 8x gains in performance, 5x reduction in data center space and 8x reduction in power, which has enabled us to deliver a vastly improved end-user experience.”

Increasing Global Demand for Flash Accelerates Rapid Growth, Fuels Aggressive International Expansion
Accelerated global demand for FlashArray has also driven rapid expansion of Pure Storage’s international go-to-market efforts. In the first half of 2013 alone, the company established new bases of operations in more than 10 countries across three continents, including: United Kingdom, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Japan, Korea, Australia and Singapore.

Pure Storage has remained resolute in its commitment to a channel-devoted sales strategy. In just over a full year of channel operations, the company has achieved more than 125-percent consecutive quarter-over-quarter channel growth, establishing strategic partnerships in key EMEA and APAC markets. Partners include: Softcat in the UK, AntemetA in France, Observatory Crest in Australia, EmFrontier in Korea, and Tokyo Electron Device Limited (TED) in Japan. Pure Storage also recently announced a strategic investment and technology development agreement with In-Q-Tel (IQT), a private investment firm serving the U.S. Intelligence Community, giving it a significant foothold in the federal sector.

“In 2009, we set out to build the next great storage company,” said Scott Dietzen, CEO at Pure Storage. “Today, we are taking our most significant step yet toward realizing that goal. This landmark financing round reinforces our position as the frontrunner in leading the transition from mechanical disk to flash memory in the data center – perhaps this decade’s most significant IT disruption. We are thrilled to have the strategic guidance of Frank Slootman and world-class public market investors, like T. Rowe Price and Tiger Global among others, to support us in this mission. 2013 has already proven to be an auspicious year for Pure Storage, with record growth on all fronts and our recipe for all-flash storage at the price of disk anointed as the one to which our competitors aspire. Fortified by this pre-IPO funding round, we will continue to accelerate our global business. Expect even bigger things from Pure in the months and years to come.”