Lightspeed Ventures Positions For The New Age of Data With Investments in Storage Space

Lightspeed Venture Partners has had a phenomenal run in the next generation storage market. In the past 12 to 14 months, four of its portfolio companies have been acquired and one has gone to IPO. Here they are:

• XtremIO sold in May to EMC for an estimated $430 million.
• In June, SK Hynix said it will acquire Link-a-Media.
• Portfolio company IO Turbine sold for $95 million to Fusion-io.
• Fusion-IO, also a Lightspeed investment, had an IPO last summer. It is now valued at $1.7 billion.
• Lightspeed sold its investment in Pliant Technology when SanDisk bought the company for $327 million last May.

Other Lightspeed portfolio companies:

• Tintri combines Flash and disk media. it has developed a storage management software that is customized for the needs of  needs of virtual machines.
• Nimble combines primary storage and backup in a system with Flash and disk media.
• Nutanix combines compute and storage. That allows for consolidation of infrastructure environments – a huge priority as companies seek to shed their data centers.

Data is the disruptor. Lightspeed seems to understand this by investing in companies that will be crucial in shaping next generation architectures for the new age of data.