Forestay Capital, the closed-end tech fund of Ernesto Bertarelli’s investment company Waypoint Capital, announced today that it has taken part – as the first foreign investor – in a $68 million Series B financing round for US hot cloud storage company Wasabi.

Founded in 2017, Forestay Capital is an investment platform dedicated to the tech sector, focusing on earlier stage novel, revenue-generating technology companies, in Europe, the USA and Israel.

It is part of Waypoint Capital, chaired by Ernesto Bertarelli, which supports a broad portfolio of leading investment businesses for the trusts and funds associated with the Bertarelli family.

“We have a constant appetite for recognizing major market trends, and there’s no doubt that data is moving to the cloud. Wasabi’s groundbreaking technology and first-rate management team provide a great way to invest in the future of storage,” said Frederic Wohlwend, Managing Partner of Forestay Capital. “Through our group’s deep background in healthcare, we have seen the huge growth of data storage requirements first hand, including for medical images, genomic research and more. Wasabi has a compelling advantage and opportunity to become a global game changer and its base on the East Coast is also in line with our goal to invest capital in that region’s tech sector.”

Wasabi chose to bypass traditional VC financing, preferring instead to raise money from industry veterans and investment arms of family offices such as Forestay Capital. With the closing of the round announced today, Wasabi has secured financing which enables the company to expand internationally, to continue to invest in the brand, and to compete for the largest storage deals in the world. The success of the round is a testament to Wasabi’s progress in becoming a leading vendor of cheap, fast, and secure cloud storage. In just over a year, Wasabi has acquired more than 3,000 customers across a wide range of industries.

David Friend, Co-founder & CEO of Wasabi, explains that “Everyone needs to store data, as storage is fundamental to everything that is going on with media and entertainment, surveillance, genomics, scientific research, social media, and IoT. We are cloud storage experts – our team has been doing it since 2005 when we founded Carbonite. Our investors recognize that Wasabi is a technical tour de force that gives us a sustainable advantage in a market that is doubling every two years. Fueled by our new funding from prominent entrepreneurs, financiers, and family offices, Wasabi will go global this year and cloud storage will become a utility like bandwidth or electricity – it will be cheap, fast and available everywhere.”