Fungible Inc.

Fungible Inc.
Company typePrivate
IndustryData Center Technology
Founded2015; 10 years ago (2015)
Founders
Headquarters
Santa Clara, California
,
United States
Key people
  • Pradeep Sindhu (Chairman)
  • Eric Hayes (CEO)
Number of employees
200[5]
ParentMicrosoft (2023⁠–⁠present)
Websitefungible.com

Fungible Inc. is a technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. The company develops hardware and software to improve the performance, reliability and economics of data centers.[6]

History

The company was founded in 2015 by Pradeep Sindhu, co-founder and chief scientist of Juniper Networks, and Bertrand Serlet, former senior vice president of software engineering at Apple Inc.[7][8]

In February 2017, the company raised $32 million in a series A round, led by Mayfield Fund, Walden Riverwood Ventures and Battery Ventures.[9]

In June 2019, the company raised $200 million (~$235 million in 2023) in a series C funding round, led by SoftBank Vision Fund, along with Norwest Venture Partners and existing investors.[10] By then, the company had 200 employees.[5]

In September 2019, Fungible announced the appointment of former Dell and IBM chief technical officer Dr. Jai Menon as its chief scientist.[11]

In July 2021, Fungible announced the appointment of Eric Hayes replacing Pradeep Sindhu as its CEO.[12]

In January 2023, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Fungible to bolster its data center infrastructure and their data processing unit.[13]

Products

Fungible develops a new category of programmable microprocessors called Data Processing Units (DPU), designed to accelerate the processing of data-centric workloads within data centers.[14][15] The DPU acts as a data traffic controller, shuttling traffic from the network to central processing units (CPU) and graphics processing units (GPU) from other chip makers. DPUs enable a high speed data center fabric between DPU-enabled compute and storage servers.[10][15]

The microprocessors enable the next evolution of data center infrastructure known as composable disaggregated infrastructure, which is a way for data centers to improve their architecture by disassociating compute and storage elements, removing the physical limitations of existing servers.[16] Data center resources can be pooled and aggregated dynamically over a high speed data fabric.[17]

References

  1. ^ Mellor, Chris (2020-02-11). "Fungible aims to slay the CPU bogeyman with composable microprocessor". Blocks and Files. Retrieved 2020-08-25.
  2. ^ Greenwald, Ted (2017-02-07). "Juniper Networks Founder Embarks on Cloud-Style Chip Venture". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2020-08-25.
  3. ^ Mellor, Chris (2020-02-11). "Fungible aims to slay the CPU bogeyman with composable microprocessor". Blocks and Files. Retrieved 2020-08-25.
  4. ^ Greenwald, Ted (2017-02-07). "Juniper Networks Founder Embarks on Cloud-Style Chip Venture". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2020-08-25.
  5. ^ a b "Fungible raises $200M Series C with aim to improve data centers". bizjournals.com. 2019-06-27. Retrieved 2019-10-08.
  6. ^ "Fungible CEO on improving economics, reliability and performance of data centers". www.cnbc.com. Retrieved 2019-07-30.
  7. ^ "Juniper Networks co-founder steps aside to lead cloud startup". www.bizjournals.com. 2017-02-07. Retrieved 2019-07-30.
  8. ^ "Juniper founder's new startup Fungible raises $200M for data processing unit". SiliconANGLE. 2019-06-27. Retrieved 2020-08-25.
  9. ^ "Juniper Networks Founder Embarks on Cloud-Style Chip Venture". wsj.com. 2017-02-07. Retrieved 2019-10-08.
  10. ^ a b "Fungible raises $200 million led by SoftBank Vision Fund to help companies handle increasingly massive amounts of data". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-10-08.
  11. ^ Fungible. "Former Dell and IBM Executive Joins Fungible as Chief Scientist". www.prnewswire.com (Press release). Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  12. ^ "Fungible Appoints Former Marvell and Broadcom Executive As New CEO". markets.businessinsider.com. 14 July 2021.
  13. ^ "Microsoft announces acquisition of Fungible to accelerate datacenter innovation - The Official Microsoft Blog". blogs.microsoft.com. 9 January 2023.
  14. ^ "Fungible raises $200 million for datacenter computing". VentureBeat. 2019-06-27. Retrieved 2019-08-13.
  15. ^ a b "To handle the data tsunami, Juniper's founder turns to custom silicon". SiliconANGLE. 2018-11-30. Retrieved 2019-10-03.
  16. ^ "Next-Gen Data Center Vendor Fungible Raises $200M In Funding". crn.com. 2019-06-27. Retrieved 2019-10-03.
  17. ^ "Words to go: Composable disaggregated infrastructure glossary". techtarget.com. 2019-06-07. Retrieved 2019-10-08.