Tallinn-based Leil, a data storage infrastructure software company, has raised €1.5 million in seed funding. The round was led by Karma Ventures with participation from Specialist VC.
The enterprise storage market is estimated at about $22 billion and is growing at nearly 20 per cent annually. More than 330 million terabytes of new data are produced each day, a volume expected to triple by 2030. At today’s pace, the amount of data generated in a full year in 2010 is created in roughly six days. Scaling archives on conventional hard-drive systems is becoming more expensive and energy-intensive, increasing demand for lower-power infrastructure.
Leil develops software that enables high-density shingled magnetic recording (SMR) hard drives to be used at an enterprise scale. SMR overlaps data tracks like roof shingles, fitting around 20 per cent more data per disk than conventional CMR drives commonly used in data centres. This improves cost per terabyte by approximately 20 per cent and reduces power consumption. Fewer drives also lower hardware costs, energy use, cooling needs, and operational overhead.
Because SMR tracks overlap, data must be written sequentially to avoid overwrites or corruption, which requires specialised software. For more than a decade, adoption was largely limited to hyperscalers that built proprietary tools but did not commercialise them.
Leil’s software automates SMR management, orchestrating how data is written, moved and recovered across thousands of drives while preserving density and efficiency. It classifies content by access patterns, groups inactive files and powers down the corresponding drives until needed, enabling up to 70 per cent energy savings depending on workload.
SMR drives suit data-intensive organisations (national broadcasters, public archives, data and AI training centres, and research institutes) operating multi-petabyte environments. Leil’s software is already in use across these segments.
According to Aleksandr Ragel, Co-founder and CEO of Leil, the next wave of innovation in AI and science is buckling under the weight and cost of its own data:
We founded Leil to change that. We are making hyperscale storage economics a reality for every enterprise, delivering significant cost savings, reducing environmental impact, and ensuring critical data remains under our customers' control. Our HDD-native approach builds a high-performing, more resilient and efficient foundation for the data-intensive future.
Leil uses a capacity-based subscription and supports a phased transition, allowing companies to run its software alongside existing hardware and add SMR drives over time.
The new funding will accelerate go-to-market efforts, expand the product roadmap and grow the commercial team.
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