Woz a Winner After All With New Startup

Fusion-io, where Steve Wozniak is chief scientist, lands more venture capital

Steve Wozniak may be a loser on the dance floor, but he's still a winner in the world of technology. Fusion-io, a Salt Lake City, Utah start-up where he works, has banked $47.5 million in venture capital.

Fusion-io makes a card stacked with fast flash memory  that can be plugged directly into servers thus improving the speed of managing large amounts of data.

One customer is the Air Force, which uses the faster data storage to speed up computer models of new designs.

Woz had served as an advisory board member before taking the job as chief scientist in February.

The news comes amid a general slump in technology funding.

With the economy poor, venture capitalists have gotten a bit stingy, and many have asked start-up companies they've funded to tighten their belts.

It's a business where personal relationships count nearly as much as the technology itself, and Wozniak has made a lot of money for a lot of people (including himself).

So while he may not have mad friends among the ballroom dancing judges on Dancing With the Stars, he can always settle for deep-pocketed friends in the tech business.

Jackson West admits that Fusion-io's technology is actually kind of sexy -- unlike Woz's samba.

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