The latest investment by Boeing’s HorizonX venture capital arm is going to Agylstor, a Silicon Valley startup that’s developing ruggedized computational storage systems with potential aerospace applications.
Boeing HorizonX Ventures led the Series A funding round, with other private investors also participating, Agylstor said today in a news release. The size of the investment wasn’t immediately disclosed, but HorizonX investments typically range from millions of dollars to the low tens of millions.
Agylstor was founded just two years ago and is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. The company said the newly announced funding round adds to the support it has received through private financing and support from its business partners, including Amazon Web Services.
“We are excited to partner with Boeing to extend Agylstor’s design capabilities and help drive aerospace platforms of the future,” Agylstor CEO Rick Carlson said. “With this funding, we will expand both our team and research and development facilities, while also scaling our technology for a future product release.”
Agylstor’s computing platform includes software and in-system hardware acceleration for compression, encryption and other services. The software architecture is built to distribute computing workloads across a wide sweep of processing and storage devices.
The amount of available data and speed of analytics continues to grow for aerospace products and services. Excited to explore new ways to analyze, control and transport info with #Agylstor. https://t.co/cmW7cuzIpf
— Dennis A. Muilenburg (@BoeingCEO) May 30, 2018
The company says its secure data storage and transfer technology is well-suited for aerospace applications, including more capable piloted and autonomous systems. Other applications include film production, geoscience and infrastructure mapping.
“Agylstor’s portable peta-scale data storage and processing capability will open up exciting possibilities with new edge-compute applications,” Brian Schettler, managing director of Boeing HorizonX Ventures, said in today’s announcement. “Our investment in Agylstor demonstrates how Boeing HorizonX leverages rapid advances in non-traditional aerospace sectors to deliver value for Boeing customers.”
Boeing HorizonX invests in technologies that have the potential to advance the aerospace giant’s products and services — ranging from autonomous flight and electric propulsion to augmented reality. The venture capital team, which was created a little more than a year ago, has a dozen companies in its portfolio.
In addition to Agylstor, those companies are:
- Morf3D, which uses 3-D printing to produce aerospace components.
- Reaction Engines, a British venture focusing on hypersonic flight.
- Myriota, an Australian venture focusing on satellite communication services for Internet of Things devices.
- Fortem Technologies for drone radar navigation systems.
- Cuberg for advanced batteries.
- Gamma Alloys, for next-generation aluminum alloys.
- Near Earth Autonomy for autonomous flight control systems.
- C360 for augmented reality and virtual reality used in immersive videos.
- Upskill for augmented-reality solutions for industrial settings.
- SparkCognition for AI tools used with the Internet of Things.
- Zunum Aero for hybrid-electric airplane propulsion.
