This Sofia Startup Just Raised $10M to Solve Enterprise Data's Biggest Headache

Jan de Vries · 2026-07-28

A Bulgarian company just closed a $10 million Series A round to tackle a problem many enterprises quietly struggle with: making their data actually usable. Tiger Technology, based in Sofia, helps organizations bridge the gap between on-premises storage and the cloud. The company announced the initial closing of its $10 million Series A financing round, led by TCEE Fund IV (advised by 3TS Capital Partners), with participation from TDJ, Endeavor Catalyst, Impetus, and existing investors including MFG Invest and Dimitar Ratchev. ### The Data Dilemma That Costs Millions Here's the thing: most enterprise data is a mess. According to Tiger Technology, over 40% of enterprise data still lives on-premises, 80% is unstructured, and more than half is "dark" -- meaning it's stored but never analyzed or used. That's a lot of wasted potential. These gaps cost organizations millions of dollars every year. And they quietly stall the AI initiatives that depend on data most companies can't even see, let alone activate. The global hybrid storage market is projected to hit $29.3 billion by 2030, driven by exploding volumes of unstructured data and enterprise AI adoption that needs data to be usable, not just stored. ### How Tiger Bridge Works Tiger Technology operates in the mission-critical segment, where even performance degradation is considered a failure. Its flagship solution, Tiger Bridge, installs on top of customers' existing cloud and on-premise storage environments as a control layer. It continuously gives users and applications consistent, transparent data access. This means organizations can place, protect, and activate data for AI and other modern applications without ripping out existing infrastructure or disrupting operations. It's a way to modernize without starting from scratch. ### A Contrarian Bet That Paid Off Alexander Lefterov, founder and CTO, explained the company's early vision: "Many years ago, we made a bet that felt contrarian. The industry was drawing a hard line between 'cloud' and 'on-premises' -- as if enterprises would eventually have to pick one and abandon the other. We didn't believe that. We believed the real need was a transparent bridge between the two: seamless, efficient, and invisible to the workflows that depend on it." He added that AI adoption, always-on data access, and an increasing threat landscape are significant drivers for their solutions and growth. ### Real-World Results Tiger Technology manages over 100 petabytes of data for some of the largest and most demanding transportation, media, construction, and government customers worldwide. Recent client results include: - A 10x increase in file-restore speed during a multi-petabyte cloud migration - On-premises storage reductions of up to 90% - Unlocking 10 years' worth of historical data for AI analysis ### What This Means for the Industry CEO Iravan Hira said the investment validates the technology, customer trust, and international business the team has built. It gives them resources to accelerate global expansion, amplify partnerships with leading cloud and technology platforms, and bring their always-on, AI-ready data infrastructure to more companies operating in mission-critical environments. Tiger Technology was founded in 2004 by Alexander Lefterov. It's built for enterprises that cannot afford downtime, continuously placing, protecting, and activating data across on-premises, cloud, and edge environments -- running seamlessly on top of existing infrastructure. As organizations accelerate cloud adoption and AI initiatives, Tiger Technology is well positioned to scale globally. The company has built a highly differentiated platform that enables enterprises to modernize their data infrastructure while preserving existing investments.