Intel Capital invests USD $30 Million in Cloud Startups

Intel through its division Intel Capital has invested USD $30 Million in three different Cloud Computing startups.

Intel Capital is a strategic investment arm of Intel and manages corporate venture capital, global investment, mergers, & acquisitions. The recent investments in cloud and automation startups include three cloud companies,

• Catalytic Chicago, Illinois, United States
• Fortanix based at California and  
• Pliops from Israel

Each of these companies has further received funding in their Series B investment rounds not only from Intel Capital but from other existing and led investors as well.

All these companies focus on critical growth areas in the space of cloud computing namely AI-powered intelligent automation, enhanced & sider data security and next-generation flash storage processor technologies.

Executive Opinion

In an official announcement at Intel website, Investment directors at Intel Capital, Mauro D’Amato and Sunil Kurkure, said, “The cloud has been one of the most transformative trends in enterprise computing – boosting productivity, cutting costs and creating flexible environments. But cloud adoption still faces momentous challenges, including security risks and an exponential rise in computing complexity. That’s why we’re pleased to announce new investments in three exceptional companies that will help overcome these challenges.”

About cloud startups, Fortanix, Catalytic, and Pliops 

Fortanix focuses problem of operating securely in the cloud with sensitive applications without having to trust the cloud. With the help of Fortanix's Runtime Encryption* technology built upon Intel® SGX, the company provides unique deterministic security by encrypting applications and data at rest, in motion and in use. In the latest Series B investment round led by Intel Capital, the company has raised USD $23 million. Existing investors Foundation Capital and Neotribe also participated. Intel Capital Director, Sunil Kurkure, will join the Fortanix Board of Directors. The funding brings the Fortanix's total funding to $31 million.

Catalytic has SaaS intelligent automation platform. It helps in eliminating manual data processing tasks and its platform has more than 200 actions to rapidly build an intelligent automation layer to process data, documents, emails, websites, and systems by coordinating people, bots, and AI. According to Catalytic website, the total investment in latest Intel led Series B investment round is USD $30 Million. Other investors in latest Series B investment round include  Redline Capital and existing investors NEA, Boldstart, and Hyde Park Angels.

Pliops is a cloud storage solutions company. According to Pliops website, the company's 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. The company said, its recent Series B investment round raised USD $30 million led by Softbank Ventures Asia. Other investors include Intel Capital, State of Mind Ventures (SOMV) and Viola Ventures, along with strategic investors Western Digital Capital and Xilinx Inc.

All these three startups have also raised more than $30 million individually in their Series B funding rounds from different investors.