Samsung will acquire cloud-computing company Joyent

Samsung Electronics announced today that it has agreed to acquire cloud-computing company Joyent. In a statement, the Korean tech giant said that the transaction (its financial terms were undisclosed) will allow it to grow its cloud-based services for its smartphones and Internet-connected devices.

Joyent will become part of Samsung’s mobile communications unit, but continue to operate as a standalone company after the deal is finalized. Key members of its tech team, including CEO Scott Hammond, CTO Bryan Cantrill, and VP of product, Bill Fine, will work on Samsung’s cloud projects.

This is the third U.S. tech company that Samsung has bought in the last couple of years. The other two are smart home appliances maker SmartThings, and LoopPay, which developed the magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology that helps Samsung Pay compete against other mobile payment services like Apple Pay, as well as traditional credit cards.

Founded in 2004, Joyent has been positioned as an acquisition target for several years as peers like Virtustream, SoftLayer, and Metacloud were snapped up in a wave of mergers and acquisitions. Its main products, which help power mobile and web apps, include container infrastructure platform Triton and cloud-based object storage service Manta.

In a blog post, Hammond wrote:

“As a result of this acquisition, Samsung will become an anchor tenant for Joyent’s Triton and Manta solutions, and will help fuel the growth of our team and the expansion of our worldwide data center footprint.

This acquisition, though, is about more than just adding financial muscle and scale. Joyent and Samsung share a culture of innovation and technical excellence, and bring together a set of highly complementary cloud, big data, mobile and IoT technologies.”

According to CrunchBase, Joyent raised a total of $131 million in funding from backers including Intel Capital, Greycroft Partners, Peter Thiel, and Telefonica Ventures.