Violin Memory Said to File IPO With $2 Billion Valuation
Violin Memory Inc., a maker of flash memory for data centers, filed to go public last month under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, said two people familiar with the matter. — The deal is being led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. …
Context & Ripple Effects
Violin Memory's reported move follows its April 2012 decision to expand its latest private round to $80 million, a raise that positioned the all-flash array maker as one of the better-capitalized players in enterprise flash storage. The Bloomberg report says the company filed last month under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act — meaning the paperwork stayed confidential while the company tests a roughly $2 billion valuation with JPMorgan Chase leading.
The pickup by SiliconANGLE and The Register on the same day signals how closely the storage trade watches any flash vendor approaching the public markets: a listing at that price would set the first real public benchmark for data-center flash arrays, a category until now priced only by private rounds.
First-order effects
- Violin Memory's existing investors gain a credible path to liquidity after the $80 million round, while the confidential JOBS Act filing lets the company vet demand for a $2 billion valuation before committing to public disclosure.
Second-order effects
- A successful offering would hand rival flash-storage vendors a public comparable, pressuring them to accelerate their own listings or sale processes rather than keep raising private money against an unpriced category.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the JOBS Act's confidential-filing mechanism becomes the default route for late-stage infrastructure companies — testing institutional appetite privately so that the first public datapoint for a hardware category arrives fully formed, at deal price, rather than through a drawn-out roadshow.
The trend: Enterprise flash storage is crossing from venture-backed niche to public-market asset class, with the JOBS Act letting vendors like Violin Memory set category benchmarks behind closed doors first.