Company That Killed Hard Drives With Expensive SSDs Invests in Startup Wanting to Replace Tape with Ceramic Platters — Pure Storage Invests in Cerabyte in Bid to Become the Nvidia of Enterprise Storage
To realize its plans and realise the dream of 10,000TB capacity cartridges, Cerabyte has secured a strategic investment from Pure Storage, which is developing its own large-capacity storage, with a focus on 1,200TB SSD modules.
Cerabyte aims to create a new layer of accessible, permanent and durable data storage, spanning from petabyte to exabyte-scale data center racks. This persistent media technology can store data for extremely long periods of time without consuming power.
Cerabyte’s ceramic-based data storage does not suffer from bit rot or silent corruption, which threatens data integrity over time. Instead, it provides an immutable record of the original data that is needed in a growing number of use cases, especially in the age of AI.
Towards the Yottabyte Era
“Pure’s investment in Cerabyte and our joint partnership will enable us to provide customers with durable and immutable data storage solutions that will revolutionize the industry,” said John (Coz) Colgrove, Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Pure Storage. “By disrupting the archive storage market, we are paving the way for long-term, easier-to-manage, and more sustainable storage.”
We’ve written about Cerabyte before. The startup is working to solve the problem of data storage by taking a cue from the ancient Egyptians who carved hieroglyphs into stone. Its much more modern solution involves using a femtosecond laser pulse to engrave dates in QR code-like patterns on ceramic, a material that can survive for over 5,000 years.
Christian Pflaum, CEO of Cerabyte, said: “As the industry moves toward the Yottabyte era, sustainable data storage that eliminates the need for data migration, thereby reducing energy footprint and TCO, will be critical to harnessing the coming data tsunami. We are excited to partner with Pure Storage to commercialize Cerabyte data storage and welcome John to our board of directors.”
