Fungible Inc.

Fungible Inc. is a technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. The company develops hardware and software to improve the performance, reliability and economics of data centers.[6]

History

The company was founded in 2015 by Pradeep Sindhu, co-founder and chief scientist of Juniper Networks, and Bertrand Serlet, former senior vice president of software engineering at Apple Inc.[7][8]

In February 2017, the company raised $32 million in a series A round, led by Mayfield Fund, Walden Riverwood Ventures and Battery Ventures.[9]

In June 2019, the company raised $200 million (~$ in ) in a series C funding round, led by SoftBank Vision Fund, along with Norwest Venture Partners and existing investors.[10] By then, the company had 200 employees.[5]

In September 2019, Fungible announced the appointment of former Dell and IBM chief technical officer Dr. Jai Menon as its chief scientist.[11]

In July 2021, Fungible announced the appointment of Eric Hayes replacing Pradeep Sindhu as its CEO.[12]

In January 2023, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Fungible to bolster its data center infrastructure and their data processing unit.[13] Fungible stockholder and ex-employee Naveen Gupta filed a lawsuit against the company, seeking to “investigate potential wrongdoing and breaches of fiduciary duties.”[14][15]

Products

Fungible develops a new category of programmable microprocessors called Data Processing Units (DPU), designed to accelerate the processing of data-centric workloads within data centers.[16][17] The DPU acts as a data traffic controller, shuttling traffic from the network to central processing units (CPU) and graphics processing units (GPU) from other chip makers. DPUs enable a high speed data center fabric between DPU-enabled compute and storage servers.[10][17]

The microprocessors enable the next evolution of data center infrastructure known as composable disaggregated infrastructure, which is a way for data centers to improve their architecture by disassociating compute and storage elements, removing the physical limitations of existing servers.[18] Data center resources can be pooled and aggregated dynamically over a high speed data fabric.[19]

References

  1. Chris Mellor. Fungible aims to slay the CPU bogeyman with composable microprocessor Blocks and Files, 2020-02-11, retrieved 2020-08-25^
  2. Ted Greenwald. Juniper Networks Founder Embarks on Cloud-Style Chip Venture Wall Street Journal, 2017-02-07, retrieved 2020-08-25^
  3. Chris Mellor. Fungible aims to slay the CPU bogeyman with composable microprocessor Blocks and Files, 2020-02-11, retrieved 2020-08-25^
  4. Ted Greenwald. Juniper Networks Founder Embarks on Cloud-Style Chip Venture Wall Street Journal, 2017-02-07, retrieved 2020-08-25^
  5. Fungible raises $200M Series C with aim to improve data centers bizjournals.com, 2019-06-27, retrieved 2019-10-08^
  6. Fungible CEO on improving economics, reliability and performance of data centers www.cnbc.com, 29 June 2019, retrieved 2019-07-30^
  7. Juniper Networks co-founder steps aside to lead cloud startup www.bizjournals.com, 2017-02-07, retrieved 2019-07-30^
  8. Juniper founder's new startup Fungible raises $200M for data processing unit SiliconANGLE, 2019-06-27, retrieved 2020-08-25^
  9. Juniper Networks Founder Embarks on Cloud-Style Chip Venture wsj.com, 2017-02-07, retrieved 2019-10-08^
  10. Fungible raises $200 million led by SoftBank Vision Fund to help companies handle increasingly massive amounts of data TechCrunch, 27 June 2019, retrieved 2019-10-08^
  11. Fungible. Former Dell and IBM Executive Joins Fungible as Chief Scientist www.prnewswire.com, retrieved 2020-04-14^
  12. Fungible Appoints Former Marvell and Broadcom Executive As New CEO markets.businessinsider.com, 14 July 2021^
  13. Microsoft announces acquisition of Fungible to accelerate datacenter innovation - The Official Microsoft Blog blogs.microsoft.com, 9 January 2023^
  14. Chris Mellor. Fungible shareholder sues company: Wants to inspect the books prior to $190m Microsoft deal Blocks and Files, 2023-01-16, retrieved 2025-07-06^
  15. Chris Mellor. Fungible lawsuit details The Storage Stack, 2023-01-16, retrieved 2025-07-06^
  16. Fungible raises $200 million for datacenter computing VentureBeat, 2019-06-27, retrieved 2019-08-13^
  17. To handle the data tsunami, Juniper's founder turns to custom silicon SiliconANGLE, 2018-11-30, retrieved 2019-10-03^
  18. Next-Gen Data Center Vendor Fungible Raises $200M In Funding crn.com, 2019-06-27, retrieved 2019-10-03^
  19. Words to go: Composable disaggregated infrastructure glossary techtarget.com, 2019-06-07, retrieved 2019-10-08^