Nyriad

About Nyriad

Nyriad was a developer of a GPU-accelerated storage system designed for high-performance and data-intensive workloads. The company was founded in 2014 by Matthew Simmons and Alex St. John in Cambridge, New Zealand. The original concept was born from the need to process massive datasets for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio astronomy project. Alex St. John was one of the creators of Microsoft's DirectX platform, while Matthew Simmons had a background in high-end audio technology.

The company's core product was the UltraIO™ storage system, which utilized the parallel processing power of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) alongside traditional CPUs to manage data. This architecture aimed to deliver high performance and resilience, positioning itself as an alternative to traditional RAID systems. The UltraIO system used block-level erasure coding processed by the GPU to provide data protection and was designed to support block, file, and object data types within a single system. Nyriad targeted clients in sectors such as media and entertainment, high-performance computing (HPC), backup and recovery, and active archiving. The business model included selling the UltraIO system and later introducing a Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) offering to provide customers with on-premise storage on a flexible consumption basis.

Nyriad went through significant changes during its operation. After New Zealand scaled back its involvement in the SKA project, the company shifted its focus to the commercial market. It faced challenges, leading to layoffs in 2019 and the departure of its founders. The company later relocated its headquarters to the U.S. in 2021 to be closer to its target market, while engineering remained in New Zealand. Over its lifetime, Nyriad raised approximately $39 million in funding from investors including DCVC and East Ventures. In early 2024, after difficulties in securing further funding, Nyriad announced it was seeking to sell the company and its technology and began an orderly wind-down. Subsequently, in May 2024, a new company named Exaba acquired the master license for all of Nyriad's UltraIO technologies, including source code and patents.