US tech giant Nvidia Corp. (Nasdaq: NVDA) today announced the acquisition of Israeli big data cloud storage company Excelero. The engineering team of the Tel Aviv-based high-performance software-defined block storage developer, which includes its founders, will join Nvidia Israel.
No financial details were disclosed. According to Start-Up National Central, Excelero, which was founded by Lior Gal, CEO Yaniv Romem, VP engineering Ofer Oshri and chief scientists Omri Mann, has raised $30.5 million since it was founded in 2014 as well as an extra investment in an undisclosed round. Investors include Mellanox, which was acquired by Nvidia as well as Battery Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures and Square Peg Capital and angels Giora Yaron, Mickey Boodaei, Shlomo Kramer and David Flynn.
Since its inception, Excelero has collaborated with NVIDIA on accelerating Excelero’s storage software with RDMA, which is core to both InfiniBand and RoCE (Ethernet) networks. The acquisition will bring Excelero’s technology, technical talent and expertise in block storage to Nvidia..
Nvidia said that Excelero will continue to expand support for block storage in its enterprise software stack, such as high-performance computing clusters. Nvidia added that the acquisition will enrich Nvidia Israel’s R&D expertise with a new software-defined storage team that will help expand support for block-storage in Nvidia’s enterprise software stack. Nvidia will continue to support all Excelero’s customers.
Nvidia Israel SVP software architecture Dror Goldenberg said, "The company and its talented team brings extensive experience and deep technical expertise in accelerated software-defined storage and networking. The acquisition will support our efforts in expanding Nvidia Israel’s areas of activity, with Excelero joining our fast growing software group".
Romem added, "The Excelero team is joining Nvidia as demand is surging for high-performance computing and AI. We’ll be working with Nvidia to ensure our existing customers are supported, and going forward we’re thrilled to apply our expertise in block storage to Nvidia’s world-class AI and HPC platforms".
Following the acquisition of Mellanox in April 2020 for $7 billion, Nvidia Israel has grown by nearly a third to more than 2,800 employees, with teams based in seven locations: Yokneam, Tel-Hai, Ra'anana, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Jerusalem, Kiryat Gat and Beer Sheva.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 7, 2022.
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