Silk, an Israeli startup developing a cloud data platform, secured $55 million in Series B funding. The round was led by S Capital, with participation from existing investors, including Sequoia Capital, Pitango, Ibex Investors, Globespan, and Vintage Investment Partners. Silk’s also welcomed new investors: Clal Insurance, Bank HaPoalim, Meitav Dash and Menora Mivtachim.

The founder's former investors

The cloud sector has seen exponential growth over the past years, with 2020’s pandemic outbreak only accelerating the need for enterprises to increase their cloud presence or innovate it. Israeli startup Silk develops a cloud data platform that enables enterprises to migrate their mission critical applications to the cloud seamlessly, while increasing performance over on-prem environments.

"The cloud vendors are now beginning the fight over customers' databases and other mission-critical 'crown jewels'. To win this fight, they need to guarantee that customers will meet their own end users' SLAs, by enabling prime scalability and performance of their mission-critical applications," says Dani Golan, CEO, Silk.

This is not Golan’s first rodeo, he previously founded Kaminario -- which operated in the all-flash cloud storage industry. While chatting with Geektime he notes that part of Silk’s technology is based on his former company’s patents for on-prem technology. Golan also adds that Kaminario is still operational as an independent company. Just that he is no longer behind the wheel, instead hiring a GM to take care of business, while he establishes Silk.

Golan says that Silk, which he founded in 2019, has raised $90 million to date. According to him, it’s no coincidence that Silk’s investors mirror those who backed Kaminario. He says that investors saw Silk’s immense potential as a catalyst for the investment. Silk has 200 employees working at its Yokneam, Israel R&D center, and offices in Boston, Paris, and England. Silk says that the capital will allow the company to accelerate its commercial efforts and expand its engineering capabilities.