# Gal Naor

> Gal Naor is the co-founder and CEO of StorONE, a New York based enterprise storage company built on the idea that software, not more hardware, is the real bottleneck in data storage. He first made his mark in 2004 as co-founder of Storwize, which pioneered real-time enterprise storage compression and was acquired by IBM in 2010 for $140 million. Naor spent roughly six years and dozens of patents building StorONE's unified S1 storage engine, which provisions block, file and object storage from the same commodity drives at a fraction of legacy cost. He is known for a contrarian, efficiency-first philosophy and for steering StorONE to cash-flow positivity with an eye toward an eventual IPO.

- **Role:** CEO & Founder at StorONE
- **Organizations:** StorONE, Storwize (acquired by IBM), QSS (acquired by Verint), Mother's Choice
- **Nationality:** Israeli
- **Education:** LL.B. in Law (information technology focus) and B.A. in Business Administration (Law and Finance), Reichman University (Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya)
- **Known for:** Co-founded Storwize and pioneered the first real-time enterprise storage compression technology in 2004., Led Storwize to a $140 million acquisition by IBM in 2010., Co-founded and scaled StorONE into a cash-flow-positive enterprise storage company.

## Career timeline

- **1999-2002** — Studied law and business administration at the Interdisciplinary Center (Reichman University), Herzliya.
- **Early 2000s** — Held a management role at QSS, later acquired by Verint.
- **2004** — Co-founded Storwize and introduced the first real-time enterprise storage compression technology.
- **2010** — Storwize acquired by IBM for $140 million after raising roughly $38 million.
- **2011** — Co-founded StorONE with CTO Raz Gordon to rebuild enterprise storage around software efficiency.
- **2012** — StorONE raised about $30 million to fund development of its unified storage engine.
- **2017** — StorONE publicly launched its platform, targeting enterprise storage at under $0.01 per GB.
- **2023** — Naor said StorONE had reached cash-flow positivity and was heading toward a potential IPO.
- **2024** — StorONE launched The StorONE Podcast; Naor featured in the debut episode on his founder journey.
- **2025** — StorONE released S1 Platform v3.9 with TierONE AI auto-tiering and SnapONE ransomware recovery, claiming 75% savings on AI and cold data versus flash.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Storwize and pioneered the first real-time enterprise storage compression technology in 2004.
- Led Storwize to a $140 million acquisition by IBM in 2010.
- Co-founded and scaled StorONE into a cash-flow-positive enterprise storage company.
- Drove development of a unified S1 storage engine provisioning block, file and object storage from the same drives.
- Backed the platform with 50+ approved and pending patents across roughly six years of R&D.
- Introduced ransomware-resilient features including 100,000 immutable snapshots per volume and file-level restore.

## Latest updates

- **2025-02** — StorONE released S1 Platform v3.9 with TierONE AI-enabled auto-tiering and SnapONE ransomware recovery, claiming 75% storage savings for AI and cold data versus flash.
- **2024-10** — StorONE launched The StorONE Podcast, with Naor featured in the debut episode discussing his path from Storwize to StorONE.
- **2023-03** — Naor said StorONE had turned cash-flow positive and was on a path toward a possible IPO within a couple of years.

## Links

- Website: https://storone.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gal-naor-0366498/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/StorOne_Inc
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/StorONEinc/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/gal-naor
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-17