DUBAI: A venture capital unit of Saudi Aramco has invested $25 million in Wasabi, a cloud storage company known for its comic videos poking fun at Amazon, the industry's dominant player.
Wasabi wants to win customers from the global IT giants that currently dominate the market including Amazon Web Services, by claiming it can offer storage at a fifth of the going rate.
It has spread the message through its comic viral videos that take pot shots at Amazon and feature the characters Nate and Kate.
In it Nate insists he loves Amazon because he can order "a Nicolas Cage pillow, but when it comes to data they're expensive and they're slow."
The latest funding was led by Prosperity7 Ventures, the diversified growth fund of Aramco Ventures with the investment arm of Western Digital also participating, Wasabi said in a statement on Thursday.
“Companies like Aramco are sitting on mountains of exploration and operational data. Energy, medical imaging and diagnostics, genomics, surveillance and finance are among many industries that are profiting from the use of AI," said Wasabi CEO David Friend. "The thing to remember, however, is that the value of AI is completely dependent on having a rich source of data. That’s why a company like Wasabi is a natural fit with a company like Aramco.”
The company said it reaches 23,000 customers globally and has more than 5,000 channel partners.
It said it would use its fresh capital to accelerate its roll out of data centers worldwide.
