RLX Technologies Gets Financing For Software Focus

RLX Technologies Inc., which in December revealed plans to exit the blade-server business and concentrate on management software for the server market, on Monday said it had secured $9.1 million in funding to help fuel growth during the transition.

The company also said that Nexcom International Co. Ltd., a manufacturer of blade servers, will use RLX's Control Tower software as a co-branded feature on its servers beginning in the second quarter.

The new funding for RLX was led by Ignition LLC, a venture-capital firm. Other investors include Austin Ventures, GM Capital Partners, Sternhill Partners, Soros Private Equity Investors, and Cockrell Investment Partners. "We are leading this round because of our renewed interest in RLX given their shift in focus," Cameron Myhrvold, a partner at Ignition, said in a statement.

RLX was an early provider of blade servers, but Scott Ferrand, VP of software engineering for RLX, says the company decided to change its focus as the market matured in the past two years and companies like IBM and Hewlett-Packard took the lead as vendors of blade-server systems.

"We found it a challenge to compete in the high-volume server space," Ferrand says. "At the same time, we found an ever-increasing desire and request by our customers to manage other people's blades."