Cloud Storage Firm Bitcasa Shuts Down

The cloud storage market has claimed another victim. Bitcasa, a cloud storage firm founded in 2011, has called it quits.

In an cryptic blog post on the Bitcasa website, the company’s CEO Brian Taptich confirmed the news.

“Bitcasa is no more, and this is not bad news. Thanks to the very hard work, generosity and persistence of a number of folks – from employees to investors and advisors – Bitcasa and its platform have become a part of something much, much bigger.

We have no doubt that Bitcasa has found the right home to fulfill a mission that has driven the company from its 2011 beginnings – to eliminate the storage and computing limitations of your connected devices, however small, in the most secure and efficient way possible. We remain optimistic that, before long (and though you may not realize it), Bitcasa’s technology will yet contribute significantly to fulfilling this mission.”

The news of the shutdown comes after VentureBeat falsely reported that Intel had acquired Bitcasa. TechCrunch reported on Friday that this was not the case. 

Last year, Taptich spoke to Talkin’ Cloud about Bitcasa’s patent win for its deduplication and smart caching techniques, which also covers the way data was encrypted with Bitcasa. It’s possible that this patent is what Taptich is referring to when he says the company remains optimistic “that, before long (and though you may not realize it), Bitcasa’s technology will yet contribute significantly to fulfilling this mission.” Or, as TechCrunch suggests, a company other than Intel could have acquired it and is just keeping quiet about it.

Taptich acknowledges that Bitcasa had a rather turbulent run in its time, changing business models from its initial offering of $10 per month of infinite storage to pulling out of consumer cloud storage entirely to focus on its platform business in spring 2016. The company never seemed to find its sweet spot in the highly-competitive cloud storage market dominated by Dropbox, Box and Google.

Taptich writes: “Looking back, it seems impossible to simplify a Bitcasa experience that, at times, felt so complicated. Though only alive for roughly four years, Bitcasa saw many highs and many lows: From TechCrunch Disrupt and Infinite Storage (and then something less than Infinite Storage) for consumers, to CloudFS for developers and the Device Economy… from Mountain View to San Mateo to San Bruno… across North America and Asia and Europe and the Middle East — all of which seemed, even for a well-funded Silicon Valley startup, disproportionately more public and dramatic than is typical.

Our hope is that everybody in the Bitcasa extended family – including our partners and end-users – feels as if they reaped some benefit, however small, from this remarkable and intense experience.”