SmartX Closes Nearly RMB 200 Million in Series B+ and C Funding to Accelerate Coverage of Mid-to-High-End Enterprise Cloud Market

On July 27, hyperconverged infrastructure leader SmartX announced the completion of its Series B+ and Series C funding rounds. The B+ round was led by Vertex Ventures China, while the C round was led by Tianchuang Capital and Hua Capital. The two rounds raised nearly RMB 200 million in total, with proceeds primarily allocated to building a next-generation distributed computing and storage engine for enterprise cloud, as well as expanding into innovative application scenarios such as containers and edge computing. Gaorong Ventures participated in SmartX's Series A1 round in 2015 and continued to invest in subsequent rounds in 2016 and 2017.

Breaking Through Key Technologies and Industries to Compete with Global Giants in the Mid-to-High-End Market

Founded in 2013, SmartX delivers agile, reliable hyperconverged and distributed block storage solutions through its SMTX OS software and Halo integrated appliances, enabling customers to rapidly build efficient, easily scalable IT infrastructure. Through continuous breakthroughs and innovation in core technologies such as distributed block storage, SmartX's hyperconverged products offer distinctive advantages in stability, performance, and openness. Recently, SmartX partnered with Intel to launch the world's first hyperconverged solution with ultra-low latency at the 100μs level, while also collaborating with leading domestic hardware vendors including Huawei and Sugon to introduce next-generation IT infrastructure solutions based on domestic hardware ecosystems. With products comparable to top-tier global vendors, a comprehensive ecosystem, and rapid service response, SmartX has broken the long-standing foreign monopoly in the financial sector and now ranks among the top three by market share. Currently, SmartX's hyperconverged solutions cover all segments of the financial industry, as well as healthcare, large-scale manufacturing, commercial retail, and real estate, accumulating numerous leading enterprise customers including Bank of Communications, Taikang Insurance Group, Guotai Junan Securities, Haier, BOE, and Evergrande Real Estate domestically, plus Korea's SBS and global e-commerce platform provider Cafe24 internationally. Customer repurchase rates for SmartX's hyperconverged products have exceeded 200%, with over 70% of customers deploying SmartX in core production environments. Meanwhile, SmartX continues to gain recognition from professional market analysis firms. In Forrester's recent global hyperconverged infrastructure report Now Tech: Hyperconverged Infrastructure, Q2 2020, SmartX was selected based on its professional, open products and quality customer cases. In 2019, IDC named SmartX a Software-Defined Storage Innovator, and Gartner listed SmartX as a key company to watch in its China hyperconverged market competitive landscape report.

Accelerating Independent Innovation in Enterprise Cloud Core Engines and Scenario Expansion, Building a Solid Foundation for Digital Transformation and "New Infrastructure"

After years of development, hyperconverged infrastructure use cases have expanded from VDI and branch office scenarios to mission-critical workloads such as databases, as well as innovative scenarios including containers and edge computing. According to Gartner projections, following years of high-speed growth at rates up to 50%, the hyperconverged market will still maintain a compound annual growth rate of 23% through 2023, becoming a significant component of the trillion-RMB enterprise cloud market. Focusing on the China market, the rollout of "new infrastructure" policies has noticeably accelerated industry digitalization and cloud migration, spawning various intelligent scenarios that create unprecedented opportunities for agile, intelligent next-generation IT infrastructure represented by hyperconverged solutions. At the same time, in the process of IT localization, only domestic vendors with genuine core technology development capabilities can provide sustainable products and in-depth services to local customers. Facing broad market opportunities and customer demands, SmartX will build upon its current technological, product, and customer advantages in hyperconverged infrastructure to increase independent R&D breakthroughs and innovation in distributed storage, computing, and other key components under the enterprise cloud architecture, deepen hyperconverged application in mission-critical scenarios, and accelerate expansion into innovative scenarios such as containers and edge computing — constructing a solid foundation for "new infrastructure" and industry digital transformation.

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