Pliops Raises $30 Million in Series B Funding Led by SoftBank Ventures Asia to Transform Data Center Infrastructure for Cloud, AI and ML

RAMAT GAN,Israel,Feb. 18,2019 --Pliops,an innovator in cloud storage solutions,today announced that it has received a $30 million Series B funding led by SoftBankVentures Asia,with participation from all Series A investors including Intel Capital,State of Mind Ventures (SOMV)and Viola Ventures,along with strategic investors Western Digital Capitaland XilinxInc.The oversubscribed round brings the total invested in Pliops to date to $40 million,including the October 2017 Series A funding of $10 million.

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Pliops will use the funds to accelerate development of its storage processor technology for cloud storage and database applications,including expansion of its teams in the US,Israel and China. Recently-appointed president and chief business officer Steve Fingerhut,based in San Jose,will spearhead global expansion and oversee the company's product debut planned for mid-2019.

With an executive team from industry leaders including Amazon,Apple,Intel and Samsung,Pliops has developed technology that solves the scalability challenges raised by the cloud data explosion and the increasing data requirements of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications. Stored data is growing much faster than current data center approaches can scale to efficiently manage,creating a storage bottleneck that impacts performance across the entirecloud data center market.The worldwidepublic cloud servicesmarket is projected to grow 17.3 percent in 2019 to total $206.2 billion,up from $175.8 billion in 2018,according to Gartner,Inc.(Gartner Press Release,Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud Revenue to Grow 17.3 Percent in 2019,September 2018).

With eight core patents pending to date,the Pliops storage processor allows cloud databases like MySQL or Cassandra deployed on disaggregated Flash to scale more efficiently via a 90% reduction in compute load,a 20x reduction in network traffic,a 50x improvement to latency and over 10x application throughput. The Pliops product delivers step function improvements across compute,networking and storage infrastructure to enable more scalable and cost effective cloud services.

Organizations whose core business is experiencing rapid storage growth can benefit from Pliops' offering,which uses standard APIs to easily integrate with major cloud databases,as well as big data,software defined storage (SDS),hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI),high performance computing (HPC),telco,edge and all flash array (AFA) architectures.

"Businesses must scale their infrastructures in the face of skyrocketing data volumes,and we're excited to help them," said Uri Beitler,CEO and co-founder of Pliops. "Pliops' technology transforms storage so that organizations achieve more consistent,readily-scaled performance with a simplified software stack. We are proud to have achieved the backing of such esteemed leading investors and to see early market traction. We look forward to sharing more about our flagship product in the coming months."

"Pliops is solving a critical problem for database and storage architects – and doing it in a way that is both elegantly simple and amazingly efficient," said JP Lee,CEO and managing partner at SoftBank Ventures Asia. "There is tremendous pent-up demand worldwide for solutions that enable next-generation data centers to perform and scale more efficiently,particularly in large cloud providers' environments. Pliops' architecture enables order of magnitude improvements in performance and even greater price/performance gains. We're delighted to welcome the company to the SoftBank Ventures Asia portfolio."

"Pliops' core technology helps to accelerate the cloud and AI workloads that are driving the next wave of innovations," said Wendell Brooks,senior vice president of Intel Corporation and president of Intel Capital. "Intel is investing in numerous technologies to meet the rapidly growing storage and processing needs of the most challenging applications. This investment in Pliops advances Intel's vision to develop the most efficient,scalable data center solutions."

About Pliops

Pliops was founded in 2017 by flash storage industry veterans from Samsung,M-Systems and XtremIO. Pliops is creating a new category of product that enables cloud and enterprise data centers to access data up to 50X faster with 1/10th of the computational load and power consumption. Its technology collapses multiple inefficient layers into one ultra-fast device based on a groundbreaking patent-pending approach. Pliops' solution solves the scalability challenges raised by the cloud data explosion and the increasing data requirements of AI and ML applications.

For more information on Pliops technology or career opportunities visit www.pliops.comor connect with us on Twitterand LinkedIn.

About SoftBank Ventures Asia

SoftBank Ventures Asia is the early-stage investment vehicle of the SoftBank Group currently operating teams in Seoul,Beijing,San Francisco,and Tel Aviv. SoftBank Ventures Asia is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp. and was established as SoftBank Ventures Korea in 2000. With over US$1.1B under management,SoftBank Ventures Asia has invested in over 250 companies across 10 countries with a focus on AI,IoT,and robotics startups. For more information on SoftBank Ventures Asia visit www.SoftBank.co.kr

About Intel Capital

Intel Capital invests in innovative startups targeting artificial intelligence,autonomous vehicles,datacenter and cloud,5G,next-generation compute and a wide range of other disruptive technologies. Since 1991,Intel Capital has invested US $12.3 billion in 1,544 companies worldwide,and more than 660 portfolio companies have gone public or participated in a merger. Intel Capital curates thousands of business development introductions each year between its portfolio companies and the Global 2000. For more information on what makes Intel Capital one of the world's most powerful venture capital firms,visit www.intelcapital.comor follow @Intelcapital.

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