SandStone Data, a Chinese enterprise-level data storage service provider that mainly provides SDS (software-defined storage) products and services in the 5G+AIoT era, officially announced that it has completed a 150 million yuan (US$21.37 million) series B+ financing on July 8, 2020. 

This round was led by Chinese large-scale state-owned enterprise COSCO Shipping Development, with participation from Xianghe Capital and Wuxi Capital.

Proceeds of the round will mainly be used for independent development of smart data storage products, industry market expansion and the construction of ecosystem. As for the ecological construction, in order to further build a nationwide direct sales + channels + cooperation ecological marketing model in China, the company plans to increase investment and establish a three-level cooperation ecology including infrastructure hardware + cloud services + application.

The customer-driven company aims to build an automated data management platform based on a resilient and reliable distributed mass storage architecture with multiple strategies. And it wants to tap into the value of data with a smart processing engine, which can help users solve the problems in the 5G+AIoT era, such as storing, managing and using massive amounts of data.

Chen Jian, founder and CEO of SandStone Data, said that: "This round will be used to build the company's user value model for data storage, data management, and data value. Meanwhile, it will continue to increase investment in key technologies and solutions to provide comprehensive empowerment for users' digital transformation." 

In terms of technology research and development, as a member of the cloud computing standard customization unit, SandStone Data has obtained more than 30 invention patents and software copyrights. It covers four product lines, including storage SandStone MOS, unified storage SandStone USP, hyper-converged all-in-one SandStone HyperCube, and secure storage all-in-one SandStone HuaYan. 

According to IDC data, as a core vendor of Chinese software-defined storage, its software-defined storage market share ranks among the top, and object storage software ranks among the top three for two consecutive years.

In terms of marketing, the sales of SandStone Data reached 200% year-on-year in 2019. What's more, its products have realized commercial deployment in more than 10 industries, supporting more than 20 different types of application scenarios such as private cloud, hybrid cloud, fintech, smart government, smart healthcare, smart transportation, smart security, etc.
As the lead investor of the financing, Hua Long, Investment Manager of COSCO Shipping Financial, said: "We have established connections with SandStone Data from the Series A round financing, and we are optimistic about the professional background of the founding team and the development direction of the industry. The team is pragmatic and enterprising, with many benchmark service cases in central enterprises, transportation and finance, and has become a leading enterprise in the field of object storage. As the leading investor of this round, COSCO Shipping is willing to work together with SandStone Data to empower the industry with digital storage +."

Tong Hesong, founding partner of Xianghe Capital, said: "The storage technology and storage-based data applications served for various enterprises have been a focus for Xianghe. We believe that in the context of new infrastructure and emphasis on Chinese technology, SandStone Data, with its core technology, can provide stable and efficient storage infrastructure services for various enterprises and lay a good foundation for the transformation of enterprise data."

According to Hou Haifeng, chairman of Wuxi Capital, SandStone Data team has keenly grasped the future trend of smart storage, continuously improved its core competitiveness, and has become a leading software-defined storage vendor in China. Wuxi is the birthplace and core area of the Internet of Things (IoT). With the large-scale application and convergence development of IoT and cloud computing, SandStone Data with the professional storage capacity and innovative data utilization capacity will effectively promote the ecological construction of IoT.

This is an article from Sohu, translated by Chris Yuan.