BROOMFIELD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Liqid, the world’s leading software company delivering data center composability, today announced today the company has secured strategic follow-on funding from DigitalBridge Ventures, the venture capital arm of DigitalBridge Group, Inc. (NYSE:DBRG) and Blackwells Capital. As IT ecosystems are in the midst of ongoing transformation associated with the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) and other high-value applications, the capital will be used to identify, create, and pursue evolving market opportunities for solutions based on Liqid Matrix™ composable disaggregated infrastructure (CDI) software and solutions.
Traditional data center architectures are rigidly configured at the point of purchase, resulting in poor scalability and hardware sprawl, wasted capital and operational expenditures, and growing carbon emissions associated with inefficient growth. As AI continues to blur the lines between on-prem, cloud, and edge computing, these IT environments cannot keep up with the demand for efficient data performance.
The Liqid Matrix CDI software platform unlocks cloud-like speed and flexibility, delivering higher efficiency for data center infrastructure. Users can configure, deploy, and scale physical bare-metal servers in seconds, then reallocate valuable resources via software as needs evolve. Liqid’s dynamic software and solutions unlock new levels of resource utilization. By enabling greater resource efficiency, Liqid CDI software also facilitates significant reductions in power and cooling requirements, which is critical as organizations seek architectures and technologies to reduce carbon emissions and better meet sustainability goals.
“The future of the data center is in the cloud, on-prem, at the edge, and everywhere in between, which means infrastructure has to be software-defined, adaptive enough to answer requests from every direction, and provide the performance and intelligence necessary to keep resources seamlessly balanced to prevent interruptions in mission-critical applications,” said Sumit Puri, CEO & Cofounder, Liqid. “The Liqid team is excited to work with DigitalBridge and Blackwells, leveraging our collective insight to imagine where the market is going and build intelligent, adaptive, more sustainable infrastructure solutions that address today’s most urgent needs for performance and efficiency, while preparing organizations for future growth as part of a more efficient IT environment that is built for change.”
DigitalBridge is a leading global digital infrastructure investment firm. With a heritage of over 25 years investing in and operating businesses across the digital ecosystem including cell towers, data centers, fiber, small cells, and edge infrastructure, the DigitalBridge team manages a $45 billion portfolio of digital infrastructure assets on behalf of its limited partners and shareholders. DigitalBridge Ventures invests in high-growth software-centric companies across emerging digital infrastructure technologies where the firm’s deep domain expertise and unique insights and access are leveraged to accelerate the growth of exceptional, disruptive businesses.
“One of our market-defining differentiators at DigitalBridge is the ability to take a holistic view of the IT landscape and make investments in next-gen infrastructure solutions that are built from day-one to thrive in an evolving digital ecosystem,” said Alexandre Villela, Senior Vice President of DigitalBridge Ventures. “Liqid’s groundbreaking, highly adaptive composable software has the potential to become a core element of AI-driven infrastructure, providing dynamic resource orchestration, a more sustainable IT footprint, and faster time-to-value for ongoing mission-critical data operations across a wide variety of industry verticals.”
Blackwells Capital is an alternative investment manager, focused on global fundamental and special-situation investing in public securities, and across the capital structure. Blackwells combines bottom-up, fundamental research techniques with the deep experience and pattern-matching ability to identify opportunities and unlock value. The Blackwells team has invested globally on behalf of leading public and private equity firms and have held operating roles and served on the boards of media, energy, technology, insurance, and real estate enterprises.
“Liqid is at the forefront of a paradigm shift in how IT infrastructure pros approach and accommodate significant increases in data performance and efficiency requirements, and Blackwells Capital looks forward to working with their team to take advantage of exciting new opportunities developing in the space,” said Gage Holzhauer, Executive Director, Blackwells Capital.
In 2021, Liqid more than doubled its workforce, surpassed the milestone of 100 customers, and executed 1034% revenue growth from 2017 to 20201. Liqid’s customers and partners include the US Department of Defense, Dell Technologies, NVIDIA, Broadcom, and Intel Corporation.
About Liqid
Liqid’s composable infrastructure software platform, Liqid Matrix™, unlocks cloud-like speed and flexibility plus higher efficiency from data center infrastructure. Now IT can configure, deploy, and scale physical, bare-metal servers in seconds, then reallocate valuable accelerator and storage resources via software as needs evolve. Dynamically provision previously impossible systems or scale existing investments, and then redeploy resources where needed in real-time. Unlock cloud-like datacenter agility at any scale and experience new levels of resource and operational efficiency with Liqid.
About DigitalBridge
DigitalBridge (NYSE: DBRG) is a leading global digital infrastructure investment firm. With a heritage of over 25 years investing in and operating businesses across the digital ecosystem including cell towers, data centers, fiber, small cells, and edge infrastructure, the DigitalBridge team manages a $45 billion portfolio of digital infrastructure assets on behalf of its limited partners and shareholders. Headquartered in Boca Raton, DigitalBridge has key offices in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Singapore. For more information, visit: www.digitalbridge.com.
About Blackwells Capital
Blackwells Capital was founded in 2016 by Jason Aintabi, its Chief Investment Officer. Since that time, it has made investments in public securities, engaging with management and boards, both publicly and privately, to help unlock value for stakeholders, including shareholders, employees and communities. Throughout their careers, Blackwells’ principals have invested globally on behalf of leading public and private equity firms and have held operating roles and served on the boards of media, energy, technology, insurance and real estate enterprises. For more information, please visit www.blackwellscap.com.
1Source: Deloitte US, 2021 Fast 500 Rankings, November 2021