BIG DATA

Core Capital Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in a broad range of disruptive technology and telecommunications companies, announced today that it has led a $13.0 million round of funding for SilverStorm Technologies. Based in King of Prussia, Pa., SilverStorm is a market leader in high-performance interconnect solutions for clustered computing based on the InfiniBand standard. The new round of funding also included Bay Partners, Castile Ventures and Axiom Venture Partners. SilverStorm's clustered interconnect solutions have been widely adopted for high-performance business and scientific computing, database clustering, and grid utility computing applications. SilverStorm's products power some of the world's largest computing clusters that are used in such diverse fields as oil and gas exploration, automotive and aerospace design, financial services, biomedical and university/government research. Current customers include Sandia National Laboratories, Riken Research Institute, Toyota, Lockheed Martin, Chevron, Sun Microsystems, Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Virginia Tech, and Canon. "Core Capital believes the market for cluster computing will expand rapidly because the cost of high performance computing is declining at the same time the size and complexity of databases and data management problems are increasing. Large enterprises and government agencies are increasingly using low cost servers and blade centers. These require open, high speed interconnect switches such as those on the Infinband standard," said William Dunbar, Managing Director of Core Capital Partners. "SilverStorm's technology leadership in InfiniBand-based solutions and its solid and growing relationships with major end-users and Tier One distribution partners made this a compelling investment for Core Capital." "We are extremely pleased to have an investor with Core Capital's experience lead this financing round," said Russ Hawkins, CEO of SilverStorm Technologies. "Core is well versed in the challenges facing growing technology companies. Having invested in many companies that develop hardware and software for large businesses and governmental enterprises, they immediately understood the value of our products. This investment will help SilverStorm expand its strategic alliances, increase sales and customer support infrastructure, and continue market-leading product development." SilverStorm is the third investment from Core Capital's second private equity fund. Core Capital raised its first fund of $170 million in 1999. Its second fund has more than $200 million in capital.