Pensando Systems is a Milpitas, California-based developer of a distributed services platform built around its programmable Data Processing Unit (DPU). Founded in 2017 by the Cisco 'MPLS' team (Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero, Soni Jiandani) along with Mike Galles and Vipin Jain, Pensando designed a P4-programmable packet processor and software stack that offload software-defined networking, security, storage and observability services from CPUs to a hardware accelerator at the edge of the server. Customers included Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Goldman Sachs, IBM Cloud and HPE, which embedded the platform into HPE GreenLake and ProLiant offerings. Pensando was acquired by AMD in May 2022 for approximately $1.9 billion and now operates as the AMD Pensando business unit, anchoring AMD's data center DPU and SmartNIC roadmap.
PENSANDO SYSTEMS has been acquired
This company is no longer available on our private secondary market.
Company data and valuation marks are estimates and may be incomplete, stale, erroneous, or revised.
Founded
2017
Total Funding
$278M
3 rounds
Total raised $278M across 3 rounds
Funding data and valuation marks are estimates and may be incomplete, stale, erroneous, or revised.
Last updated 06-25-2026
Latest Round
Type
Series C
Date
October 2019
Amount
$145M
Valuation
—
Lead Investors
| Date | Round | Amount Raised | Valuation | Lead Investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 2019 | Series C | $145M | — | Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lightspeed Venture Partners |
| 2019 | Series B | $62M | — | Not disclosed |
| 2018 | Series A | $71M | — | Not disclosed |
Prem Jain
Co-Founder & CEO
Soni Jiandani
Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer
Mario Mazzola
Co-Founder
Luca Cafiero
Co-Founder
Vipin Jain
Co-Founder & CTO
Mike Galles
Co-Founder & ASIC Architect
Randy Pond
CFO/COO
John Chambers
Chairman of the Board
Competitor list is illustrative and may be incomplete, stale, or erroneous.
NVIDIA (BlueField DPU)
NVIDIA's BlueField DPU family is the dominant data processing unit in the market, tightly integrated with NVIDIA's GPU and InfiniBand networking stack for AI and cloud data center workloads.
Marvell Technology (OCTEON DPU)
Marvell's OCTEON 10 family of DPUs targets the same data center networking, security and storage offload market as Pensando's distributed services platform.
Intel (IPU / Mount Evans)
Intel's IPU (Infrastructure Processing Unit) line, co-developed with Google, competes with Pensando in cloud-scale infrastructure offload for hyperscalers.
Broadcom
Broadcom's Stingray SmartNIC and broader networking silicon portfolio overlap with Pensando's distributed services platform in switching, security and storage offload.
Fungible (acquired by Microsoft)
Fungible's F1 DPU was an early Pensando competitor focused on programmable storage and networking offload; the company was acquired by Microsoft in 2023.
AWS Nitro System
Amazon Web Services' in-house Nitro hypervisor/SmartNIC system is the captive hyperscale offload platform that Pensando explicitly targeted as the model to commoditize for non-AWS clouds and enterprises.
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