90% On-Premises Storage Cuts Unlock 10-Year Data Backlogs for AI Analysis

A Sofia company engineered a way to make cloud storage invisible to the systems that depend on it, and a fresh $10 million bet from investors signals that hybrid data infrastructure just became the next critical battlefield for enterprise AI.

Tiger Technology secured €8.7 million in an initial Series A close. The funding arrives as organizations wrestle with a painful contradiction: over 40% of enterprise data still lives on-premises, 80% of it remains unstructured, and more than half sits dark, stored but never analyzed. That dead weight drains millions annually while quietly sabotaging AI projects that need active, accessible information.

TCEE Fund IV, guided by 3TS Capital Partners, led the round. TDJ, Endeavor Catalyst, Impetus, and existing backers MFG Invest and Dimitar Ratchev also joined.

The company, founded in 2004 by Alexander Lefterov, targets operations where even performance hiccups count as outright failures. Its core product, Tiger Bridge, layers directly onto existing on-premises and cloud storage environments. The software acts as a control layer that continuously provides consistent data access to users and applications without forcing infrastructure replacements or workflow interruptions.

CEO Iravan Hira framed the raise as validation of the technology and a launchpad for global expansion. He described the company’s infrastructure as always-on and AI-ready, built for enterprises where downtime simply cannot happen.

Meanwhile, Lefterov recalled the earlier, contrarian wager that shaped the company. While the industry hardened a line between cloud and on-premises, Tiger Technology bet on a transparent bridge connecting both worlds. That bet now collides with exploding unstructured data volumes and enterprise AI demand, forces driving the hybrid storage market toward a projected $29.3 billion by 2030.

The company manages over 100 petabytes of data for global transportation, media, construction, and government clients. Recent results include a tenfold acceleration in file-restore speeds during massive cloud migrations, on-premises storage cuts reaching 90%, and the activation of a decade’s worth of historical data for AI analysis.

Sever Totia, Partner at 3TS Capital Partners, highlighted the firm’s technical breakthroughs in petabyte-scale hybrid storage, mission-critical deployments, and alignment with AI, security, and data sovereignty trends. He noted the company has built a platform that modernizes infrastructure while protecting existing investments.

The fresh capital will fuel deeper pushes into the US, Europe, and the Middle East, alongside accelerated product innovation and a broader partner ecosystem. For organizations sitting on mountains of dormant information, the clock on turning dark data into usable fuel just sped up.