Nutanix is a startup founded by a former Google employee that develops virtualized datacenter infrastructure. The company was founded in 2009 and has received over one billion in total funding. Nutanix is new to the Edge Computing sector with one patent issued in January of 2021 and a continuation application published in May of 2021. The funding, a strategic partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and a recent cloud partnership with Google will help the company ramp up to compete in the growing industry that is showing no signs of slowing down.
Nutanix’s current efforts in the edge computing space are centered around deployments within IoT systems (U.S. Patent No. 10,893,116), but it will be worth watching to see if it shifts into other categories to leverage their data storage expertise. It is also worth noting that Google could be looking for more than a partnership with Nutanix, as its last patent activity was in 2017. Acquiring Nutanix would be an expensive but possibly wise investment to expand Google’s research and patent efforts back into that space.
To keep an eye on Nutanix and watch out for any potential disruptors in the space, check out the Edge Computing Patent Forecast®!
