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§ Private Profile · Santa Clara, CA, USA
Nexenta Systems is a technology company.
Nexenta Systems has raised $142.0M across 8 funding rounds.
Key people at Nexenta Systems.
Nexenta Systems has raised $142.0M in total across 8 funding rounds.
Nexenta Systems develops software-defined storage (SDS) solutions, including NexentaStor and NexentaFusion, using open-source architecture. These offerings provide flexible, high-performance data management for multi-cloud environments. Their technology supports demanding enterprise, telecommunication, and internet service provider infrastructures, addressing storage needs for 5G and IoT applications.
Founded in 2005 by Evan Powell, its first CEO, and co-founder/CTO Alex Aizman, Nexenta's insight centered on open-source software. They sought to decouple storage intelligence from proprietary hardware, offering agility and cost-effectiveness. Aizman's background as a co-creator of the iSCSI stack informed their technical foundation.
Nexenta's products serve enterprises, telecom operators, and service providers globally, optimizing storage infrastructures. The company envisions liberating organizations from vendor lock-in, enabling maximum value from standard hardware. It empowers businesses with scalable, adaptable storage solutions for evolving data management challenges.
Nexenta Systems has raised $142.0M across 8 funding rounds. Most recently, it raised $20.0M Other Equity in December 2017.
Key people at Nexenta Systems.
Nexenta Systems is a software company specializing in Software-Defined Storage (SDS) solutions, now operating as Nexenta by DDN, a subsidiary of DataDirect Networks (DDN) following its 2019 acquisition.[1][2] It builds products like NexentaStor, a platform-agnostic software for network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SAN), running on commodity hardware to create virtualized storage pools from hard disk drives and solid-state drives.[1][2] Nexenta serves multi-cloud enterprises, 5G/IoT telcos, service providers, and organizations needing cost-efficient, open-source-driven storage, solving the problem of expensive proprietary hardware by enabling scalable, performant data management across legacy, cloud-native, and edge environments—with nearly 3,000 customers, 300 partners, 50 patents, and 2,000 petabytes under management.[1][5]
The company has demonstrated strong growth through its open-source roots and community, boasting up to 6,000 customers, 400 partners, and 46,000 community members in some reports, positioning it as a leader in OpenSDS for multi-cloud data centers.[1][5]
Nexenta Systems was founded in 2005 by Alex Aizman and Dmitry Yusupov, software developers and former executives at Silverback (later acquired by Brocade), who had co-authored the open-source iSCSI initiator for the Linux kernel.[1][2] The idea emerged from Sun Microsystems' release of OpenSolaris, prompting them to pioneer Linux integrations with ZFS, OpenSolaris, and OpenStorage codebases, leading to the launch of early open-source storage products in 2008 and the vibrant Nexenta OS project blending Solaris kernel with Debian/Ubuntu apps.[1][2]
Headquartered initially in Santa Clara, California (later San Jose), Nexenta gained early traction in software-defined storage, notably at Stanford University in 2012-2013, disrupting hardware-dominated markets with commodity-hardware solutions.[2][3] A pivotal moment came with its May 2019 acquisition by DataDirect Networks, evolving it into Nexenta by DDN while retaining its open-source innovation focus.[2]
Nexenta rides the software-defined storage (SDS) and multi-cloud trends, capitalizing on the shift from hardware appliances to flexible, open-source software amid exploding data from 5G, IoT, and cloud-native apps.[1][2][4] Timing aligns with OpenSolaris' 2005 release and the 2010s SDS boom, enabling cost savings on commodity hardware during hyperscale data growth—used at institutions like Stanford to challenge incumbents.[2]
Market forces like rising petabyte-scale demands and telco edge computing favor Nexenta's scalable, performant solutions, influencing the ecosystem by popularizing OpenSDS standards, community-driven innovation, and vendor-neutral multi-cloud data centers.[1][5]
Nexenta by DDN is poised to expand in edge AI, 6G precursors, and hybrid multi-cloud, leveraging DDN's resources to scale beyond 6,000 customers amid surging unstructured data needs.[1][2][5] Trends like AI-driven storage optimization and sovereign clouds will shape its path, potentially amplifying influence through deeper OpenSDx integrations and partnerships.
As the original SDS pioneer, Nexenta's open-source heritage positions it to redefine cost-performant storage, sustaining leadership in an era of data everywhere.[1]
Nexenta Systems has raised $142.0M in total across 8 funding rounds.
Nexenta Systems's investors include Ken Miyauchi, Tarkan Maner, Javelin Venture Partners, Lake Trail Capital, SAB Capital, SV Booth Investments, TRB Equity, ACME Capital, AngelPad, Atlantic Bridge University Fund, BoxGroup, Collaborative Seed & Growth Partners.