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ArDrive has raised $1.6 million for its decentralized alternative to cloud storage giants like Dropbox and OneDrive.
Digital Renaissance Foundation and venture firms D1 and SevenX backed the Arweave-based startup, as did Arweave’s founding team.
The funding gives ArDrive some runway as the business of file storage experiences continues to shift. In China, a run on hard drives has triggered localized shortages and price spikes. Meanwhile, cloud companies such as Dropbox are reporting upticks in revenue and users.
The startup now stores 570 gigabytes of data atop Arewave’s permanent database, said CEO Phil Mataras: “We just had 50 gigs uploaded two days ago; it’s really exploded.”
Those storage numbers are puny against the industry’s top names. Dropbox, for example, offers consumers 2 terabytes of data for $20 a month.
Even so, Mataras believes ArDrive’s strategy – charge by the file, not by the month – gives the eight-person startup a competitive advantage if “subscription fatigue” begins to take hold.
“People just don’t like having another $9.99 bill to pay,” he said, pointing toward “microtransactions” as a potential workaround.
In ArDrive’s case, that means charging one-time fees – less than a penny for a word doc, two for a photo – to store users’ data for eternity.
Sam Williams, Arweave CEO, said ArDrive is becoming a “cornerstone of the ecosystem.”
“It is the way that people right now are uploading data to the network en masse,” he said.
