Chinese computer giant Lenovo is set to announce the acquisition of veteran Israeli enterprise storage startup Infinidat, which was founded by Moshe Yanai and among the senior managers is CPO Shahar Bar-Or.
This will be Lenovo's first major acquisition in Israel and the Chinese company plans to turn it into its Israel development center, specializing in data management for large organizations.
Market sources estimate that Lenovo will pay hundreds of millions of dollars for Infinidat, which has estimated annual revenue of $200-300 million from the sale of servers and server management systems. The company has been profitable in terms of EBITDA for the past four years.
The big winners from the deal are the shareholders who invested in Infinidat’s last fund raising round in 2020, as several shareholders sold their stakes beforehand at a loss. Among the investors in that round were Gilad Shany’s ION fund and the Bronfman family’s Claridge fund. The round was led by Goldman Sachs and TPG, according to VC database PitchBook. The round was however a disappointment to many Infinidat employees, who claimed that it had diluted their holdings of options and shares, and some of them sued the company. As far as is known, some of the lawsuits are still in progress.
The round took place after the company had been operating at a loss for many years and after Moshe Yanai, who founded the company in 2011, was removed as chairperson. At the same time as the fund raising round, 70% of the company’s employees were laid off. A year later, Shahar Bar-Or, formerly with SanDisk, was appointed CEO of Infinidat, and carried out a recovery program.
Yanai kept his stake in the company, and for him the current sale is another in a series of successes. He has been responsible for the sales of several Israeli storage companies that brought international giant companies to Israel. He sold companies to IBM and to EMC, and has now brought Lenovo here.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on January 16, 2025.
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