Agámi Systems

Agámi Systems

Company type	Private
Industry	Data storage devices
Founded	April 2003
Founder	Kumar Sreekanti
Defunct	July 28, 2008
Fate	Disbanded
Headquarters	Sunnyvale, California
Key people	David Stiles, CEO Kumar Sreekanti, CTO
Products	AIS3000, AIS6000
Website	www.agami.com (defunct)

Agámi Systems, Inc. operated as a network storage firm headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, focusing on solutions for both network attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) sectors through its Agámi Information Servers (AIS).

History

The enterprise was established in April 2003 by entrepreneur Kumar Sreekanti in San Jose, California, originally under the name StorAD. It leveraged intellectual property acquired from Zambeel, a similar storage startup that ceased operations in 1999.

During its initial funding round, Agámi attracted about $5.5 million from venture capital sources including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers—with board member Vinod Khosla—Alta California Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Apex Ventures, and Advanced Equities Venture Partners. A subsequent financing event in September 2004 secured over $25 million. In August 2006, the company obtained $11 million in debt financing from Hercules Technology Growth Capital.

David Stiles became part of the leadership team in 2005 and was named CEO in May 2007 amid executive restructuring that included replacing CFO Dean Seniff. In March 2007, Agámi enhanced its product line by integrating support for the iSCSI block access protocol.

Throughout 2007, Agámi continued to raise funds with new investments from Duff, Ackerman, and Goodrich. In February 2008, as the Great Recession began to impact markets, the company announced a third capital infusion totaling $45 million from its existing investor base.

Despite these financial injections and expansion strategies, Agámi unexpectedly terminated its operations on July 28, 2008. This closure came as a surprise to its workforce of approximately 80 to 100 employees spread across Sunnyvale and Hyderabad offices. Reports suggested that the anticipated $45 million funding round had failed to finalize as planned.

After the shutdown, CEO David Stiles acquired the company’s assets and facilities to establish Scalable Storage Systems by September 2008. Furthermore, in October 2008, Ocarina Networks integrated Agámi’s engineering team based in Hyderabad.

This timeline illustrates the difficulties encountered by startups within capital-heavy storage industries despite considerable venture capital backing and leadership adjustments.