Designed to easily orchestrate enterprise applications over public, private and edge clouds, Ori’s innovative, full-stack AI cloud platform was five years in the making. Once development was completed, the company needed the equipment to scale up and bring the platform’s capabilities to life for customers.
With high customer demand, Ori needed significant capital to obtain and deploy expensive GPU infrastructure to deliver their services. Financing options were limited for the small, early-stage company. Already familiar with the concept of leasing in the IT infrastructure space, founder and CEO Mahdi Yahya and his team explored options. Financing the long-lived assets was the right answer, but at the time many potential finance partners—not really understanding the business’s potential—had low risk tolerance and a high bar for qualifying for debt financing that didn’t align with Ori’s immediate needs.
Through a referral from Supermicro, Ori connected with Data Sales. Data Sales took the time to understand Ori’s business and its market potential, while also turning around a lease offer tailored to Ori’s business model within 24 hours.
The speed and flexibility of the process were crucial to Ori’s rapid infrastructure expansion. Data Sales’s technology focus and decades of experience in technology leasing meant they were comfortable with the assets, which also differentiated them from other potential finance partners. Operating, in a way, as a venture capital company in leasing form, Data Sales could develop innovative and flexible solutions.
The partnership between Ori and Data Sales began in the tens of millions of dollars and has continued to expand as Ori’s business has grown exponentially during the first year of leasing.
Ori leadership has been impressed with customer service, efficient processes and the level of knowledge and caring that Data Sales demonstrates regarding Ori’s business and the cutting-edge technology it requires. CFO Richard Tame notes that the relationship between the two companies “is less transactional” than relationships with other leasing companies tend to be; Data Sales is “a proper partner.”
Data Sales took the time to understand our business and tailored the solution based on our business needs.
