SandForce Closes $25 Million Series D Funding

SandForce Inc., the pioneer of SSD (Solid State Drive) Processors that enable standard NAND Flash deployment in enterprise, client and industrial computing applications, today announced that it has closed $25 million in Series D funding, led by Canaan Partners. Existing investors who also participated include DCM, Storm Ventures, Translink Capital, LSI Corporation & UMC Capital.

"We are increasing volume shipments of our Enterprise and Client SSD Processors to leading drive manufacturers around the globe and continue to receive exceptional market acceptance of our DuraClass technology in I/O intensive storage applications," said Michael Raam, president and CEO of SandForce. "This new funding will help us bring our next-generation products to market, expand our customer and partner support infrastructure, and accelerate our core technology development that will extend our market leadership."

The patent-pending SandForce DuraClass technology is a set of flash memory management features that enable advanced MLC-based SSDs to deliver world-class reliability, performance, and power efficiency compared to traditional rotating media storage or other SSD solutions. In addition, the SandForce DRAM-less architecture further differentiates the solution from virtually all other controller technologies and enables the industry's smallest form factors for SSD designs.

"SandForce has break-through SSD Processor technology and has executed extremely well on its business plan," said Eric Young, general partner at Canaan Partners and new member of the SandForce Board of Directors. "With products that are leading in a hyper-growth market and shipping for revenue to a growing list of top storage drive manufacturers, SandForce represents a strong investment for us."