Software-defined storage company Cloudian announced its venture into edge analytics with the launch of its new company, Edgematrix. The majority-owned subsidiary of Cloudian is currently only available in Japan. 

Edgematrix aims to solve the difficulty in deploying and maintaining artificial intelligence (AI) solutions in the real world by processing data and decisions near the edge.

The new company, which will be led by Cloudian co-founder Hiroshi Ohta, will implement Cloudian’s HyperStore object storage platform as a foundation for AI processing of large-scale data sets at the edge.  

Edgematrix raised Series A funding of $9 million from three strategic investors: NTT Docomo, Shimizu Corp., and Japan Post Capital, with individual contributions from Cloudian co-founder and CEO Michael Tso and board director Jonathan Epstein.

Cloudian closed a $94 million Series E funding round last year, bringing its total haul to $174 million.

Cloudian launched in 2011 with HyperStore object storage as its flagship product. The cloud-enabled storage service allows enterprises to manage cloud and on-premises storage assets through a common application programming interface (API). The platform comes with integrated capacities ranging from 48 terabytes (TB) to 840TB per device.

“AI solutions are insatiable consumers of data and therefore require a limitlessly scalable, highly cost-effective data storage and management foundation,” said Cloudian CEO Mike Tso in an emailed response to questions.

Marrying Cloudian’s HyperStore with Edgematrix will send subsets of data analyzed at the edge to a central storage repository using Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) API. The fully native S3 storage compatibility offers Edgematrix customers data management and processing across on-premises and public cloud environments closer to where data is collected from IoT devices like sensors, Tso explained. 

Over the past two years, AI solutions developed by the former Cloudian team have been deployed by a number of large companies and organizations in Japan that, according to Tso, have provided, “increased revenue opportunities, cost savings and operational efficiencies.”  

Tso went on to explain how Edgematrix is working to build a public AI delivery network with NTT Docomo, as well as a private AI delivery network for smart buildings with Shimizu Corp. 

“Moving forward, the key value Edgematrix offers is an end-to-end delivery network for AI solutions, enabling a marketplace of partner solutions to be deployed with intelligent decision making at the edge," Tso explained.

Edgematrix plans to focus on the Japanese market for at least the next year.