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"Violin Memory wants to be the Stradivarius of flash-storage companies, and just raised some big money to help make it happen.\n\n  \nDon Basile doesn&amp;#8217;t want to get ahead of himself. He&amp;#8217;s only been running Violin Memory for a couple of years, taking over when the Silicon Valley flash memory company had no revenue and a similar valuation. But he can&amp;#8217;t quite help himself, particularly as Violin rival Fusion-io &amp;#8212; which Basile used to run &amp;#8212; is planning to go public this week at a valuation in excess of $1 billion.\n&amp;#8220;We&amp;#8217;re going to watch the IPO very carefully, particularly to see how Wall Street likes the story,&amp;#8221; Basile says. &amp;#8220;We understand they told Wall Street that they&amp;#8217;re soon moving to $50 million quarters, which is something we plan to hit by Q4. If the market gives Fusion-IO the type of multiple it&amp;#8217;s expecting, then we&amp;#8217;ll probably conclude our own banker selection by late summer.&amp;#8221;\nViolin Memory is part of the burgeoning world of flash memory, which Oracle \n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tORCL\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t boss Larry Ellison boosted last December by announcing a SuperCluster system that would include 246 terabytes of flash storage. Violin doesn&amp;#8217;t do whole systems, but does sell arrays into corporate data centers and has major partnerships with companies like HP \n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\thpq\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t. It&amp;#8217;s a fairly similar company to Fusion-IO, without the former&amp;#8217;s over-reliance on a single large client (Facebook).\nToday, Violin is announcing that it has raised $40 million in new VC funding &amp;#8212; just four months after announcing a $35 million funding. The new deal comes at a pre-money valuation of $400 million, and is coupled with up to $100 million in new debt availability. The company isn&amp;#8217;t identifying its new investors, except to say they are &amp;#8220;cross-over public market investors.&amp;#8221; In other words, the types of big public equity funds that would hold onto stock in an IPO.\u00A0Return backers include Toshiba and Juniper Networks \n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJNPR\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t.\nPart of Basile&amp;#8217;s push to take Violin public may be rooted in his former career as a venture capitalist &amp;#8212; and the knowledge that IPO windows can close almost as fast as they can open. &amp;#8220;Market conditions are obviously a factor in our decisions,&amp;#8221; he says, adding that Fusion-IO isn&amp;#8217;t the only new issuer he&amp;#8217;ll be watching: &amp;#8220;I&amp;#8217;m also interested in how Groupon is treated, because it&amp;#8217;s had such a fast ramp-up. Is it okay to have a short track record, if that track record is strong?&amp;#8221;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://fortune.com/2011/06/07/violin-memory-plays-at-400-million-valuation/>