Western Digital® Makes Strategic Investment in Skyera

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Mar 12, 2013, 07:57 ET

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 12, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Skyera Inc. and Western Digital® Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced that Skyera has received strategic funding from Western Digital Capital as part of its recently announced Series B round of financing. Western Digital Capital co-invested in the $51 million round as an extension of the strategic relationship between the two companies that also includes joint technology development. Western Digital had previously funded Skyera as its initial outside investor.

"The backing of Western Digital has enabled us to ramp our business across marketing, sales and engineering which has been instrumental in creating the industry's most innovative solid-state solution," said Radoslav Danilak, chief executive officer of Skyera. "With our skyHawk family of enterprise solid-state storage systems we are witnessing the next era of solid-state storage and I strongly believe that having a close working relationship with Western Digital, the world's top disk drive vendor, is invaluable as we set out to reshape the storage landscape."

"One of our primary goals in developing strategic relationships with technology innovators in the broader storage ecosystem is to enable customers to develop highly optimized storage solutions that meet their changing data management needs," said Steve Milligan, president and chief executive officer, Western Digital. "We see companies like Skyera as offering a dramatic improvement over traditional approaches to emerging storage challenges. We will continue to support innovation by collaborating with customers and partners, and investing in companies who are addressing today's most exciting storage opportunities."

Skyera's skyHawk series of enterprise solid-state storage systems, priced at an industry breakthrough price point of less than $3 per gigabyte, mark the first time that the latest generation 19/20nm solid-state technology can be used as a direct replacement for traditional enterprise hard disk-based systems.

Skyera's skyHawk solid-state solution has received industry acclaim as a visionary and innovative product, substantiating Skyera's approach to mainstream enterprise solid-state storage. Its SEOS™ solid-state operating system combines hardware, storage and data management into a unified solution that provides top performance, cost and power consumption attributes.

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About Skyera
Skyera Inc. is a disruptive provider of enterprise solid-state storage systems designed to enable a large class of applications with extraordinarily high performance, exceptionally lower power consumption and cost effectiveness relative to existing enterprise storage systems. Founded by the executives who previously developed the world's most-advanced flash memory controller, Skyera is backed by key technology and financial partnerships designed to position it at the forefront of the hyper growth in the solid-state storage sector. The company was chosen by Flash Memory Summit as a Best of Show award winner for 2012 in the category of Most Innovative Flash Memory Enterprise Business Application. For more information about the company, visit skyera.com.

About Western Digital Corp.
Western Digital Corp., Irvine, Calif., is a global provider of products and services that empower people to create, manage, experience and preserve digital content. Its subsidiaries design and manufacture storage devices, networking equipment and home entertainment products under the WD®, HGST and G-Technology brands. Visit the Investor section of the company's website (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include statements concerning Western Digital's strategic growth activities and the anticipated benefits of its investment in Skyera. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements, including risks and uncertainties listed in Western Digital's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), including its recent Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on Feb. 1, 2013, to which your attention is directed. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and Western Digital undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

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SOURCE Western Digital Corp.