PSA: Nope, Intel did not acquire Bitcasa

CES seems to be making some bloggers a little trigger happy with posting. Just a little while ago VentureBeat published a story claiming that Intel had acquired Bitcasa, a cloud storage company that had shut down operations last year. We’ve confirmed directly with Intel that this is not the case, however.

“Intel did not acquire Bitcasa,” an Intel spokesperson tells TechCrunch.

The information does raise a question though: has someone else acquired it?

The farewell note on the homepage from Brian Taptich, the former CEO of the company, seems to imply that it is definitely looking for a buyer — and may have already been acquired:

We have no doubt that Bitcasa has found the right home to fulfill a mission that has driven the company from its 2011 beginnings – to eliminate the storage and computing limitations of your connected devices, however small, in the most secure and efficient way possible. We remain optimistic that, before long (and though you may not realize it), Bitcasa’s technology will yet contribute significantly to fulfilling this mission.

We’re asking around and will update this post as we learn more.

Bitcasa was launched at Disrupt in the Battlefield in 2011, entering the market at a time when Dropbox and Box where just getting on a roll and everyone was getting excited about the potential of the cloud. That business model has proven to be challenging for more than just Bitcasa, with Dropbox seeing a drop in its own valuation and Box seeing ups and downs as a public company as it looks for profitability.

Bitcasa had raised just over $20 million, with investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Horizons Ventures.

Updated with more direct statement from Intel.