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Portworx is a technology company.
Portworx provides a comprehensive data management platform engineered for Kubernetes environments. Its core offering automates, protects, and unifies container data, delivering enterprise-grade storage, high availability, and disaster recovery for stateful applications. The platform is designed to support mission-critical workloads, ensuring data persistence and performance across diverse cloud and on-premise infrastructures.
The company was founded in 2014 by Murli Thirumale and Gou Rao. Their insight stemmed from recognizing the nascent challenges of running stateful applications on container orchestration platforms. They set out to transform traditional enterprise storage paradigms by building a solution specifically architected for containers, addressing the unique requirements of modern cloud-native deployments from inception.
Portworx serves enterprises that leverage Kubernetes for their critical applications, including databases and big data workloads. Its long-term vision centers on enabling organizations to confidently deploy and manage complex stateful applications within a Kubernetes framework, prioritizing resilience, operational agility, and efficiency. The company aims to provide a robust platform experience that simplifies technology choices for evolving infrastructures.
Portworx has raised $56.0M across 3 funding rounds.
Portworx has raised $56.0M in total across 3 funding rounds.
Portworx has raised $56.0M in total across 3 funding rounds.
Portworx's investors include Sapphire Ventures, .406 Ventures, Baseline Ventures, Matt Ocko, Gutbrain Ventures, Mayfield, Meritech Capital Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Third Point Ventures, Uncorrelated Ventures, Jared Kopf, Jonathan Siegel.
Portworx is a technology company that builds a cloud-native data management platform specializing in persistent storage for Kubernetes-based containerized applications. It provides PX-Enterprise, a fully integrated solution offering elastic scalability, high availability, automated operations, data protection, backup, disaster recovery, and security for mission-critical stateful workloads like databases (Cassandra, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB), streaming (Kafka), search (Elasticsearch), machine learning (TensorFlow), and big data (HDFS, Spark).[1][2][3][5][8]
Portworx serves Global 2000 enterprises (e.g., Carrefour, Comcast, Ford, GE Digital, Lufthansa, T-Mobile), Fortune 1000 companies, federal agencies, and startups running on Kubernetes platforms like Red Hat OpenShift and SUSE Rancher across hybrid, multi-cloud, and on-premises environments. It solves the challenge of managing complex, high-performance data for containerized apps by unifying block, file, and object storage into a shared pool, automating capacity management, enabling self-service for developers, and simplifying multi-cloud migrations—outperforming basic CSI drivers with advanced features like zero RPO disaster recovery and over one million IOPS.[2][4][6][7][8]
Portworx emerged from the insight of founder Shankar Ganesan (referred to as Gou in some accounts), former CTO of Dell's data protection division post-Ocarina acquisition, who recognized the need for programmable, application-aware storage to empower IT/DevOps teams amid rising container adoption.[4] The idea crystallized around an "application-first" approach to storage, contrasting infrastructure-centric models, which aligned perfectly with Kubernetes' application-centric orchestration when it gained traction.[4]
Early traction built on supporting on-premises alongside clouds, capturing enterprises in transition—87% of businesses now use containers, nearly half in production on Kubernetes. Pivotal moments include becoming the #1 Kubernetes storage platform trusted by Global 2000 firms, a 2021 acquisition by Pure Storage (NYSE: PSTG) expanding its as-a-service model, and innovations like PX-Fast for ultra-low latency.[3][4][6] This evolution humanizes Portworx as a bridge for legacy IT to modern DevOps, automating repetitive tasks for teams at scale, like Roblox serving 150 million users.[4]
Portworx rides the Kubernetes explosion—the de facto standard for container orchestration, powering 50%+ of production enterprise apps amid cloud-native shifts.[4] Timing is ideal: as firms modernize stateful workloads (databases, AI/ML) from VMs to containers, traditional storage lags, creating demand for Portworx's app-aware solution that handles on-prem persistence alongside cloud mobility.[1][4][5]
Market forces favor it: hybrid/multi-cloud dominance (avoiding vendor lock-in), rising data gravity in AI/edge, and platform engineering's need for self-service data planes. Portworx influences the ecosystem by setting standards for K8s data resilience—e.g., enabling seamless migrations for Global 2000—and partnering with OpenShift, Rancher, MongoDB, accelerating adoption while Pure Storage amplifies its reach in the $100B+ storage market.[2][3][4][6]
Portworx is poised to dominate as Kubernetes data platforms become table stakes for enterprise cloud-native stacks, with expansions into AI-driven workloads and deeper Pure Storage synergies driving subscriptions. Trends like agentic AI, edge computing, and zero-trust security will shape its path, demanding even smarter automation and resiliency.
Its influence may evolve toward orchestrating "data everywhere" in composable infra, potentially via AI-optimized storage or broader Pure ecosystem plays—cementing its role from Kubernetes storage leader to indispensable data fabric for the next decade. This builds on its core strength: simplifying data for apps that power the world's missions.
Portworx has raised $56.0M across 3 funding rounds. Most recently, it raised $27.0M Series C in March 2019.
| Date | Round | Lead Investors | Other Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 1, 2019 | $27.0M Series C | Sapphire Ventures | .406 Ventures, Baseline Ventures, Matt Ocko, Gutbrain Ventures, Mayfield, Meritech Capital Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Third Point Ventures, Uncorrelated Ventures, Jared Kopf, Jonathan Siegel, Lance White, Marcus Bartram, Cisco, GE Ventures, Vishal Lall, Dave Wright |
| Apr 1, 2017 | $20.0M Series B | Sapphire Ventures | .406 Ventures, Baseline Ventures, Matt Ocko, Gutbrain Ventures, Mayfield, Meritech Capital Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Third Point Ventures, Uncorrelated Ventures, Jared Kopf, Jonathan Siegel, Lance White, Marcus Bartram, Abhishek Shukla |
| Jun 1, 2015 | $9.0M Series A | Mayfield | Third Point Ventures, Marcus Bartram, Michael Dell |