Microsoft Acquires Fungible, and There Is a Twist ⇥ techcrunch.com

Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch:

In December, reports suggested that Microsoft had acquired Fungible, a startup fabricating a type of data center hardware known as a data processing unit (DPU), for around $190 million. Today, Microsoft confirmed the acquisition but not the purchase price, saying that it plans to use Fungible’s tech and team to deliver “multiple DPU solutions, network innovation and hardware systems advancements.”

According to the press release, the Fungible team will be joining Microsoft. Not interesting enough? Here is the kicker paragraph:

Fungible was launched in 2016 by Bertrand Serlet, a former Apple software engineer who sold a cloud storage startup, Upthere, to Western Digital in 2017, alongside Krishna Yarlagadda and Juniper Networks co-founder Pradeep Sindhu. Fungible sold DPUs that relied on two operating systems, one open source and the other proprietary, and a microprocessor architecture called MIPS to control flash storage volumes.

I think that means Bertrand Serlet is joining Microsoft. Yes, that Bertrand Serlet, in case you got your Bertrands Serlet mixed up and, for some reason, decided to call him “a former Apple software engineer” instead of “the Microsoft Aero fan”. (Via Elle.)