Qumulo is an American
data storage company based in
Seattle,
Washington. Founded in 2012, it offers products and services to help other companies
manage and
curate large amounts of data.
History
Qumulo was founded in March 2012 by Neal Fachan, Peter Godman, and Aaron Passey. They all previously worked at
Isilon, a storage platform that was acquired by
EMC.[1][2] Several of Qumulo's key employees are also former Isilon employees.[3][4][5]
The company received $2.3-million seed funding from investment company Valhalla Partners.[6][7] In November 2012, it secured an additional $24.5 million from a
Series A round led by
Highland Capital Partners.[2][7] By the end of its first year, the company had raised a total of $26.8 million while releasing few details about its possible product offering.[1][2]
After an 18-month development period in 2013–2014, Qumulo began selling its products in August 2014.[8][9] Six months after its product release, the company announced completion of a $40-million funding series led by
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.[5][8] Before entering the development period, Qumulo employed 18 people[2][7] which increased to 90 by February 2015[8][4] and to 150 employees in January 2016.[10]
The company remained secretive about its product offering until March 2015,[11] when it finally offered specific details of its software, describing it as a "data aware" storage system.[9] This was followed by a $32.5-million funding series in June 2016 adding new investor
Allen & Company.[12][13] However, the company's share price had dropped by more than 35% when compared to previous rounds and the funds generated were below the company's expectations.[14]
In November 2016, Qumulo hired Bill Richter to succeed Godman as CEO.[12][15] Godman continued as CTO until the end of 2018.[16] Qumulo raised $30 million additional funds in April 2017 and $93 million in June 2018, bringing it total funding to $230 million.[17][18] In January 2019, the company opened offices in
Vancouver, Canada.[19] It employs approximately 220 people as of April 2019.[20] Citing economic conditions and getting the company to profitability, on June 29, 2022 Qumulo laid off 80 employees, approximately 19% of its workforce.[21] Aaron Passey, who helped launch Qumulo back in 2012, returned to the Seattle-based data management company in 2022.[22]
In September 2018, the firm announced an update to its software adding
machine learning-powered
pre-fetch to anticipate which files the user will most likely access next. The software preemptively caches files identified by analyzing user behavior and patterns in file access.[27][28]