Wuala, the Zurich-based peer-to-peer-storage startup, has been taken over by LaCie, the French manufacturer of external storage devices in a deal to ultimately create a “digital storage provider”. They are calling it a merger, but Wuala is clearly a lot smaller than LaCie. Terms were not disclosed. The deal marks a high point for Wuala co-founder and CEO Dominik Grolimund, but rather confirms the usual course of European startups in exiting as early as they can rather than scaling their startups to a point that they become world-beaters. It also looks like they either didn’t go for the VC deals they were rumored to be in discussion about, or that those talks never came to fruition. However, all props to Grolimund who has been on a four year journey from developing what became Wuala while at university – and perhaps a hardware storage company is the natural home for Wuala’s technology.
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