Lenovo to buy Israeli enterprise storage co Infinidat

Chinese computer giant Lenovo is scheduled to announce its acquisition of an Israeli start-up company specializing in the field of data storage Infinitefounded by Moshe Yanai and among its senior directors is Prime Minister Shahar Bar Or.

This will be Lenovo’s first major acquisition in Israel, and the Chinese company plans to turn it into an Israeli development center specializing in data management for large enterprises.

Market sources estimate that Lenovo will pay hundreds of millions of dollars for Infinidat, which has annual revenues estimated at $200 million to $300 million from the sale of servers and server management systems. The company has been profitable in terms of EBITDA over the past four years.

The big winners from the deal are shareholders who invested in Infinidat’s last fundraising round in 2020, with many shareholders having previously sold their stakes at a loss. Investors in that round included Gilad Shani’s ION Fund and the Bronfman family’s Claridge Fund. The round was led by Goldman Sachs and TPG, according to VC database PitchBook. However, the round was disappointing to many Infinidat employees, who claimed it diluted their holdings of options and stock, and some of them sued the company. As far as is known, some lawsuits are still ongoing.

The round took place after the company had been operating at a loss for many years and after Moshe Yanai, who founded the company in 2011, was removed from the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors. At the same time as the fundraising round, 70% of the company’s employees were laid off. A year later, Shahar Bar-Or, formerly of SanDisk, was appointed CEO of Infinidat and implemented the recovery program.

Yanai has retained his stake in the company, and for him the current sale is another link in a string of successes. He was responsible for the sales of several Israeli warehousing companies that brought global giants to Israel. He’s sold companies to IBM and EMC, and now he’s brought Lenovo here.

Published by Globes, Israel Business News – en.globes.co.il – on January 16, 2025.

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