Google made an unusual move by investing millions in this Pittsburgh storage startup (GOOG, GOOGL)

pulse

March 22, 2017 1:02 AM

Google has made a rare investment straight from the mothership: This time, in Pittsburgh-based Avere Systems, makers of data center software and hardware.

Avere Systems CEO Ron Bianchini

Today, nine-year-old Pittsburgh-based data center storage company Avere Systems announces a new $14 million round of funding, with participation from its existing Silicon Valley venture investors...and from Google.

That's a little unusual, truth be told. Historically, when Google and its affiliated companies want to invest in startups, it's via CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) or GV (formerly Google Ventures), the dedicated venture capital arms of the Alphabet parent company.

It's less common for Google corporate to invest in companies, though it's not unprecedented.

And the move puts Avere Systems in good company: Previous investments that similarly came straight from the Googleplex itself included the mysterious Magic Leap, Pokémon Go developer Niantic, and even Elon Musk's SpaceX.

In the specific case of Avere, a Google spokesperson points out that the startup and its business play very nicely into one of the search giant's biggest initiatives.

Google Cloud, the company's pay-as-you-go supercomputing service, is trying to make a big push into large businesses, under the stewardship of VMware founder Diane Greene. Avere's storage products hinge on helping those same big companies make those kinds of cloud moves. In fact, Avere has been a Google Cloud partner since 2015.

"We both have this strong vision of supporting the enterprise," says Avere CEO

What Avere does, explains

pulse