Private company

Qumranet

Former enterprise software company

Qumranet, Inc. was an enterprise software company offering a desktop virtualization platform based on hosted desktops in Kernel-based Virtual Machines (KVM) on servers, linked with their SPICE protocol. The company was also the creator, maintainer and global sponsor of the KVM open source hypervisor.2 It ceased to exist in 2008.1 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

2005Founded1
  • Industrysoftware development1
  • HeadquartersNetanya1

Qumranet, Inc. was an enterprise software company offering a desktop virtualization platform based on hosted desktops in Kernel-based Virtual Machines (KVM) on servers, linked with their SPICE protocol. The company was also the creator, maintainer and global sponsor of the KVM open source hypervisor.2

The story

The company was founded in 2005 by CEO Benny Schnaider, with Rami Tamir as president, Moshe Bar as CTO, and chairman Giora Yaron. Qumranet had raised $20 million in two financing rounds from its founders, Norwest Venture Partners, Cisco Systems, and Sequoia Capital, in addition to investment by the founding partners.

The company's first product, named "Solid ICE", hosted Windows and Linux desktops on central servers located in a data center.

The Ra'anana-based company developed a virtualization technology for IT data centers.

The company introduced KVM into the Linux kernel, and their Solid ICE desktop virtualization platform received attention.

Avi Kivity was the lead developer and maintainer of the Kernel-based Virtual Machine project from mid-2006, that has been part of the Linux kernel since the 2.6.20 release in February 2007.

Qumranet was on the Gartner Group's 2008 list of "Cool Vendors," an award given to small companies with advanced technology.

On September 4, 2008, Qumranet was acquired by Red Hat, Inc. for $107 million.

From Wikipedia’s article on Qumranet, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Acquisitions

  1. Succeeded by Red Hat1

Timeline

  1. 2008Dissolved Dissolved1
  2. 2005Founded Founded1

Sources

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