Hopes to make hay on burgeoning SSD market
Fusion-io, the maker of solid state adapters and appliances, last week filed its IPO, hoping to raise $150 million.
Based in Salt Lake City, Fusion-io partners with IBM, HP and SuperMicro, who are making its products available to companies that want to increase the performance of their applications, while reducing power consumption.
Two firms are handling the IPO for Fusion-io. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have not yet set the price range for the shares.
Review: FusionIO’s ioDrive 320GB
Fusion-io claims it has shipped more than 20PB of solid state drives and memory since its inception in 2005. The company also claims it has 1,000 customers, among them Facebook, Zappos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.
Fusion-io’s SEC filing shows that the company is in the red – in the six months ending December 31, 2010 the company generated $58.2 million in revenue, a net loss of $8.2 million. The SEC filing also shows that Fusion-io only has $3.5 million cash.
Founded by David Flynn and Rick White, Fusion-io also lists Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak as its chief scientist. The company faces stiff competition from LSI, PMC-Sierra, Intel, Micron, STEC, Pliant Technologies and other vendors of SSD products. Fusion-io has received $115.5 million in venture funding from Accel Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Dell Ventures, among others.
Shares would be listed on the NYSE and funds would be used to expand sales and marketing activities.
