Lightbits Labs, inventor of the NVMe over TCP storage protocol and the first KV cache engine optimized for AI, announced a dual victory in industry recognition, earning a spot on the CRN Storage 100 list and being named a winner in the StorageNewsletter Awards 2026 for the Connectivity and Networking category.Together, these honors underscore Lightbits’ accelerating momentum and reflect the growing industry consensus that true software-defined, Ethernet-native data infrastructure enabled by LightOS is essential for weathering today’s NAND supply chain volatility and supporting performance-intensive workloads at scale.

“Recognized as a pioneer in NVMe/TCP, Lightbits Labs has made a significant impact on the market, reinforcing the widespread adoption of Ethernet and alternative transport protocols. Across multiple product generations, the company demonstrates strong momentum in disaggregated, software-defined storage, leveraging NVMe, its network-based implementations, and SSD technology to meet the evolving demands of modern infrastructure. In recognition of these strengths, the jury has named Lightbits Labs the winner of the Connectivity and Networking category for Lightbits SDS,” said Philippe Nicolas, owner and editor of StorageNewsletter, and jury president of the StorageNewsletter Awards 2026.

The industry honors follow a period of massive momentum for Lightbits, including a 3X YoY increase in software purchases and recognition on Forbes’ list of America’s Best Startup Employers. 

“While pipelines for legacy hardware-bound systems are stalled due to NAND and DRAM supply chain volatility, Lightbits’ momentum is accelerating,” said Eran Kirzner, CEO and co-founder, Lightbits Labs. “Our growth and these industry honors validate that as a survival strategy, enterprises are moving away from proprietary hardware and standardizing on software-defined, Ethernet-based infrastructure for agility and cost-efficiency. The data infrastructure model enables organizations to modernize their data centers while breaking free from supply chain constraints.”

Lightbits’ award-winning, disaggregated software-defined storage, LightOS, is natively designed with NVMe/TCP – the gold standard for high-performance data access over low-latency networking. Lightbits modernizes data centers and provides a strategic buffer against current market volatility. Reference architectures are built on industry-standard commodity hardware, not proprietary frameworks, delivering: 

• Total Architectural Freedom: High-performance storage on x86 hardware with zero vendor lock-in
• Maximum Hardware Efficiency: Dramatically lower TCO by consolidating flash into shared, high-performance pools
• Operational Resilience: The flexibility to mix NAND types and vendors, bypassing critical supply chain bottlenecks
• Sustainable Scaling: A smaller data center footprint that reduces power and cooling requirements

Stop reacting to changes in the NAND and DRAM supply chains and start outperforming them. Don’t let 52-week lead times and 250% price hikes stall your data center initiatives.