Fusion-io Lands New Funding and CEO

Fusion-io, the company responsible for bringing some of the fastest SSD solutions on the planet to the hands of affluent consumers, has just landed a new round of funding in order to further dominate the market. Just after launching its ioDrive Duo and naming Steve Wozniak as the firm's Chief Scientist, it has just closed a Series B round of funding worth a staggering $47.5 million.


The cash came from a group of investors led by global venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners and joined by Series A investors including New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Dell Ventures and Sumitomo Ventures. Scott Sandell, general partner at NEA, spoke quite highly of Fusion-io: "In just over a year, this company has demonstrated through its ground-breaking product offerings that it has the potential to change the way enterprise organizations think about storage. This round of funding will enable Fusion-io to build on that momentum and help the company keep pace with the growth demands of the marketplace, while permitting them to continue leading the evolution of network storage."


The company plans to use the Series B funding to "significantly increase production capabilities to meet the rapidly growing demand for Fusion-io’s current offerings," and it'll also use the dough to develop the next generation of Fusion-io technologies that will build on its industry-leading server-attached storage products to supply server-deployed, network-attached solid-state storage. If you were hoping for a hint about the future, you've got it. The ioSAN -- described as a PCI Express-based product that extends the raw power of Fusion-io’s solid-state technology across the network -- will be hitting the scene this summer.


In related news, the company has selected David Bradford to be CEO. Mr. Bradford will be responsible for leading the company's strategic expansion, "seizing the opportunity to help transform the corporate data centers of the world with Fusion-io's revolutionary solid state storage solutions." Good luck out there -- not that you'll really need it.