IStor Seeks More Funding

IP storage startup iStor Networks is aiming to nail down a $10 million to $15 million funding round and says its iSCSI controller card will start beta testing by midsummer.

The company, which received $11 million in February 2002, says it has just started negotiating a Series B round and hopes to close it in June or July. In addition to the company's current Asian investors -- CDIB Ventures, D-Link Systems Inc., Paclink, Quanta Computer Inc., and VIA Technologies Inc. -- several California-based VCs will participate in the round, according to Simon Huang, iStor's cofounder, president, and CEO. "We are just at the beginning of the round of funding," he says, adding that the company has already received a $5 million commitment from its current investors (see IP Storage Has a Pulse).

The Irvine, Calif., company, which is developing ASIC-based iSCSI controller cards, will use most of the additional funding to expand its engineering and business development, Huang says. Currently, 34 of the company's 38 employees are engineers. "We don't want to put too much funding into sales and marketing," he says. "So our burn rate is pretty good."

IStor is producing high-end iSCSI storage controllers to let storage systems connect to IP networks on the front end. Its 4-by-10-inch card offers either one 10-Gbit/s port or between one and eight 1-Gbit/s ports, and supports up to 128 Serial ATA drives.

Huang says he expects the additional funding to last until the middle of next year, when the company is aiming to hit the breakeven mark. That may be a push, however, since the company has yet to even start beta tests. But Huang insists that the technology is very close to the final stages of development.