Folio Photonics (Folio), a company that develops and sells archival data storage products based on multi-layer nanophotonic media, has closed an $8 million Series A financing round, accelerating the company’s  transition from technology development into productization and active commercial engagement with major hyperscalers.The financing positions Folio to capture near-term opportunities in the growing archival storage market – a sector projected to exceed $12 billion globally by 2028 – while laying the foundation for an even larger long-term opportunity as the purpose-built Knowledge Layer infrastructure for the AI era, built on patented technology originally developed at Case Western Reserve University.

The investment was co-led by Material Impact and The O.H.I.O. Fund, alongside investments from JumpStart Ventures, Pavey Investments and Refinery Ventures, and the JobsOhio Ventures Fund.

“AI is fundamentally changing the economics and infrastructure requirements of storage,” said Steven Santamaria, CEO, Folio Photonics. “The world is generating more data than existing infrastructure can afford to remember. There is a large and growing addressable market in traditional archival storage today – and we intend to win in it. But the bigger opportunity is what comes next: the Knowledge Layer that AI will require. Old data is future intelligence. Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) generate intelligence – Folio retains it. We are building the infrastructure for both, and we’re proud to be doing it here in Ohio, with Ohio partners who share our conviction that globally important deep-tech infrastructure can be built and manufactured in this region.”

Platform and Technology
Folio’s proprietary multilayer optical media platform delivers a step-change in cost, longevity, durability, and energy efficiency compared to HDD drive and tape systems. The platform features ultra-low idle energy consumption, 50- to 100-year media life, and immutable retention characteristics – qualities that align directly with both the established archival storage market and the emerging requirements of AI-era data infrastructure. The platform is designed for integration with existing manufacturing ecosystems, accelerating the path to commercial scale. Commercialization of Folio’s platform is currently targeted for 2027.

A Two-Horizon Market Opportunity
The global archival and cold storage market represents a substantial and immediate opportunity. Enterprises, government agencies, media companies, and cloud providers spend billions annually on tape and hard disk drive (HDD) systems to retain data that must be kept, but it is rarely accessed. Folio’s multilayer optical media platform is designed to disrupt this market with meaningfully better economics:

• Dramatically lower energy consumption (90+ % lower)
• Longer media life (50 to 100 years vs. 5 to 10 years for tape)
• Immutable retention characteristics that reduce total cost of ownership

At the same time, AI is creating a second, larger opportunity that Folio believes will define the next decade of infrastructure investment. Training an AI model requires an enormous amount of data – and unlike most technology challenges, there is no ceiling: the more data a model is trained on, the smarter and more capable it becomes.

Unique to AI, this data requirement never stops growing. As models improve, the data used to build them compounds, creating a perpetually expanding storage challenge that existing infrastructure was never designed to handle. Folio calls this the Knowledge Layer – the foundational infrastructure that stores the data AI learns from. It is one of the fastest-growing storage challenges in technology today, and no purpose-built solution yet exists.

Folio’s platform is designed to address both horizons: competing today in the established archival market where the business case is proven, and building toward a foundational role as the storage infrastructure the AI era will require.

“Folio Photonics exemplifies the kind of advanced technology company we want to help scale. The company combines world-class innovation, strong leadership, strategic market timing, and the opportunity to create high-value manufacturing and engineering jobs in the state. The near-term archival storage market offers a clear commercial path, and the Knowledge Layer opportunity provides Folio with a long runway for growth. We are excited to support Folio as it advances its goals to become a leader in next-gen data infrastructure solutions,” said Ray Leach, president and co-founder, The O.H.I.O. Fund.

Use of Proceeds
The Series A financing will support Folio’s next phase of growth, including:

• Active customer engagement with major hyperscaler partners
• Productization of its archival and Knowledge Layer storage platform
• Scaling manufacturing readiness
• Expansion of strategic industry partnerships
• Growth of engineering and operational teams in Ohio

The global storage market exceeded $250 billion in 2025, reflecting growing demand for cloud, enterprise, and hyperscale storage infrastructure. The archival storage segment alone is estimated at approximately $17 billion annually and is expected to grow steadily as organizations retain increasing volumes of long-lived data.

“Folio is tackling one of the most important infrastructure challenges emerging from the AI era – how to store massive amounts of data sustainably and economically over long periods of time,” said Paul Deninger, operating partner, Material Impact, who joined the Folio Board and was formerly an Iron Mountain board member as that company built out its data center strategy. “The archival storage market alone is a large and proven opportunity where Folio’s economics are compelling. And beyond that, Folio is positioning to become foundational Knowledge Layer infrastructure for AI. The company has assembled an impressive technical foundation, is actively engaged with hyperscaler partners and has the potential to define a new category. We are proud to support them in that mission.”