Intel Capital has joined existing investors Goldman Sachs, Highland Capital Partners, and Matrix Partners in investing $8.5m in Acton, Massachusetts-based Virtual Iron, which emerged from stealth mode in February with its VFe technology, which enables the creation of virtual machines that span multiple servers.
Virtual Iron has also signed a collaboration agreement with Intel, and will use the Series C funding to continue product development, as well as increase its sales and marketing efforts. The company has also secured an option to raise an additional $2m.
The company had already raised $20m from investors since its formation in 2003, and differentiates itself from virtual server suppliers like EMC Corp’s VMware subsidiary and SWsoft Inc by the fact that its VFe technology creates a virtual computing environment that can span up to 16 physical servers and manage up to 128 virtual computers.
Intel has already shown its interest in server virtualization by joining Insight Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners in investing a reported $12.4m in SWsoft in June, and announcing a collaboration deal with the software firm.
In March it announced that it had contributed code to the open source Xen virtual hypervisor project to enable support for the forthcoming Intel Virtualization Technology enhancements, and it continues to fund research and the ongoing development of Xen.
