이 기사는 2022년 01월 26일 08시03분 thebell에 표출된 기사입니다

SK Telecom Americas (SKTA), the South Korean mobile carrier’s North American venture investment arm, has invested additional funds in storage startup Pavilion Data Systems, which raised $45 million in its latest funding round.

All existing backers participated in the funding, including SKTA and Korea Investment Partners, along with new investors including Mirae Asset, Liberty Street Advisors and Gaingels, Pavilion said in a statement on January 20. The round has brought the total raised by the startup to $107 million.

SKTA, which was established in Silicon Valley in 1995, invests in innovative startups in the information and communication technology sector and pursues collaborative opportunities. In 2014, SKTA launched an accelerator, SKTA Innopartners, and Pavilion was one of its first graduates.

SKTA Innopartners made a $2.5 million seed investment in Pavilion, and participated in the Series B and C rounds in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

“I think SK Telecom’s North American arm invested in the startup as a financial investor,” an industry insider said. “But the mobile carrier might have also expected potential synergies, as well as financial gains.”

Pavilion provides a proprietary data analytics acceleration platform, consisting of the Pavilion HyperParallel File System and Pavilion HyperOS, positioning itself as a leading player to address the increasing need for a high-performance storage platform, especially for artificial intelligence and machine learning applications.

Three-quarters of Pavilion’s 2020 customers repurchased in 2021 and its new customers doubled in the past year, the company said in the statement.

Industry experts say SK Telecom’s potential collaboration with Pavilion could generate synergies in several areas where the wireless carrier focuses, including artificial intelligence and cloud businesses. Some also expect a possible collaboration between the storage startup and SK Hynix, which supplies chips used in data centers.

SKTA’s continued investments will also likely help the South Korean mobile carrier enhance its brand recognition in the US market and build up relationships with local venture capital firms. (Reporting by Jang-jun Lee)