NVM Express

What NVM Express does

NVM Express, Inc. is an Oregon-incorporated non-profit consortium founded in 2014 that develops, maintains, and promotes the NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) open specification set. NVMe defines how host software communicates with non-volatile memory across PCI Express, RDMA, TCP/IP, and Fibre Channel transports, and currently constitutes the de facto industry standard for SSDs in all form factors (U.2, M.2, AIC, EDSFF) and all market segments from client/mobile through hyperscale.

The organization's product portfolio consists of modular specifications organized into the NVMe Base Specification, Command Set specifications (NVM, Zoned Namespaces, Key Value, Computational Programs, Subsystem Local Memory), Transport specifications (PCIe, RDMA, TCP, Fibre Channel), the NVMe Management Interface (NVMe-MI), and the NVMe Boot Specification. Supporting the specifications, NVM Express distributes drivers for Windows, Linux, VMware, UEFI, FreeBSD, and Solaris, and operates a compliance and interoperability testing program through the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), whose qualified products populate the NVMe Integrator's List. The consortium's most recent release, NVMe 2.3 in August 2025, added power governance features targeted at AI data center workloads.

The business model is a three-tier annual membership structure: Promoter members pay $12,000/year with board representation and full governance rights; Contributor members pay $4,000/year with work group participation and specification access; and Adopter members pay $500/year for access to ratified specifications and marketing participation. The organization is governed by a Board of Directors drawn from the 13 Promoter companies (AMD, Dell Technologies, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Meta, Micron Technology, Microchip Technology, Microsoft, Samsung, Seagate Technology, Solidigm, and Western Digital Technologies), and serves an ecosystem of over 100 member companies spanning SSD manufacturers, semiconductor vendors, system OEMs, and hyperscale cloud providers.

Name

NVM Express

Legal name

NVM Express, Inc.

Website

https://nvmexpress.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2014

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

NVM Express is a non-profit industry consortium founded in 2014 that develops and maintains the NVMe open specification standard for SSD communication, serving over 100 member companies across the storage, semiconductor, and hyperscale cloud ecosystem.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Storage Interface Standards

NAICS

Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151)

SIC

Services-Computer Integrated Systems Design (7373)

akta.pro primary industry

Storage Networking (Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NVMe-oF) (HDABAEAG)

Keywords

• NVMe specifications
• Storage interface standards
• SSD protocol standards
• Non-volatile memory
• PCIe storage

Headquarters

HQ city

Beaverton

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Membership Dues: NVM Express generates revenue through three tiers of annual membership dues: Promoter members pay $12,000/year, Contributor members pay $4,000/year, and Adopter members pay $500/year. These fees fund the consortium's operations, specification development, and industry outreach activities.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

NVM Express develops and publishes the open NVMe specification library that defines how host software communicates with non-volatile memory across multiple transports including PCI Express (PCIe), RDMA, TCP, and Fibre Channel. The consortium sells three annual membership tiers (Promoter, Contributor, Adopter) that grant varying levels of specification access, work group participation, and governance rights, and partners with UNH-IOL to deliver compliance and interoperability testing for NVMe, NVMe-MI, and NVMe-oF products.

Product overview

NVM Express is a non-profit industry consortium (not a product company) responsible for developing, maintaining, and promoting the NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) open set of specifications. The NVMe specification defines how host software communicates with non-volatile memory across multiple transports (PCIe, RDMA, TCP/IP, Fibre Channel). The organization offers a comprehensive library of specifications including the NVMe Base Specification, Command Set specifications (NVM, Zoned Namespaces, Key Value, Computational Programs, Subsystem Local Memory), Transport specifications (PCIe, RDMA, TCP, Fibre Channel), NVMe Management Interface, and NVMe Boot specifications. In addition to specifications, NVM Express provides compliance and interoperability testing through partnership with UNH-IOL, driver resources for multiple operating systems (Windows, Linux, VMware, UEFI, FreeBSD, Solaris), and educational materials including webcasts and technology documentation. The latest NVMe 2.3 specifications were released in August 2025, with over 100 member companies contributing to the standards development.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• NVM Express Base Specification

Quantifiable outcome

• 6-7x faster than SATA SSDs with PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSDs
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers13 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration8 records

Feature10 records

Partnerships

Eight partnerships are on record, tiered core, official liaison and industry affiliation.

• University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL)coreTechnology or IntegrationNVM Express partners with UNH-IOL to conduct official compliance and interoperability testing for NVMe, NVMe-oF, and NVMe-MI specifications. UNH-IOL provides test services, test reports, plugfests, and compliance test tools. Products passing testing are listed on the NVMe Integrator's List.
• DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force)official liaisonTechnology or IntegrationOfficial industry liaison creating open manageability standards spanning diverse IT infrastructures including cloud, virtualization, network, servers and storage. DMTF provides Redfish management schema standards needed to manage large arrays of storage devices.
• SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association)official liaisonStrategic or Co-development PartnerGlobal organization of storage vendors and customers working together on Form Factor specifications and Swordfish specification for advanced storage management. NVM Express and SNIA share a liaison agreement focused on Computational Storage.
• Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Storage Workgroupofficial liaisonTechnology or IntegrationTCG Storage Workgroup builds upon existing TCG technologies and philosophy, focusing on standards for security services on dedicated storage systems. The security layer of SCSI and NVMe technology devices are defined in this group.
• PCI-SIG (PCI Special Interest Group)industry affiliationTechnology or IntegrationCommunity responsible for developing and maintaining PCI Express specifications. NVMe is optimized for PCI Express based solid state drives and PCIe specifications are the most widely referenced wire protocol for the NVMe interface.
• INCITS/T11industry affiliationTechnology or IntegrationResponsible for Fibre Channel standards development. Fibre Channel is a wire protocol used to communicate the NVM Express interface and is commonly used in enterprise data centers.
• CompactFlash Associationindustry affiliationTechnology or IntegrationFocuses on creating industry standards for flash-based memory cards targeting professional imaging, video and industrial markets. Has chosen NVM Express technology as its highest performance interface option.
• SD Associationindustry affiliationTechnology or IntegrationGlobal ecosystem setting memory card standards for consumer electronics. Has chosen NVM Express technology as its highest performance interface option for mobile and portable markets.

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• JEDEC Solid State Technology Association: JEDEC is the broader semiconductor standards body that defines underlying memory technologies (DDR, NAND, UFS) which NVMe is built on top of. It is the foundational standards organization for the components NVM Express depends on, making it a broad incumbent peer.

Direct peers

• DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force): DMTF develops the Redfish management standard used to manage large arrays of NVMe devices. NVM Express and DMTF maintain a formal industry liaison agreement, making DMTF a directly comparable management-standards body serving overlapping enterprise audiences.
• INCITS / T11: T11 (under INCITS) develops the Fibre Channel standards used by NVMe over Fibre Channel transport. They are a directly comparable transport-standards body with formal industry affiliation to NVM Express, focused on enterprise storage networking.
• Trusted Computing Group (TCG): TCG's Storage Workgroup defines the security layer for NVMe and SCSI devices (including TCG Opal). NVM Express and TCG have a formal liaison agreement, positioning TCG as a directly comparable security-standards peer in the storage ecosystem.
• PCI-SIG (PCI Special Interest Group): PCI-SIG develops and maintains the PCI Express specification, which is the primary transport for NVMe. NVMe is optimized for PCIe-based SSDs and the two consortia maintain a formal industry affiliation. They are sister standards bodies in the storage/compute interconnect ecosystem.
• SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association): SNIA is a global storage industry organization that co-develops Swordfish and Form Factor specifications with NVM Express via a formal liaison agreement. It is a sister storage-industry standards body with overlapping membership and complementary scope.
• CXL Consortium: CXL (Compute Express Link) is a competing/adjacent interconnect standard targeting memory-semantic and cache-coherent workloads that overlap with NVMe's high-performance storage focus. Both consortia address low-latency host-to-device communication for modern data center workloads.

Emerging players

• Gen-Z Consortium: Gen-Z was an emerging memory-semantic fabric standard with overlapping scope to NVMe-oF in the disaggregated memory/storage space. While it has wound down operations, it represents the class of competing fabric standards that target similar workloads to NVMe over Fabrics.
• UFS / JEDEC Universal Flash Storage: UFS (Universal Flash Storage), standardized through JEDEC, is a competing storage interface for mobile and embedded devices where NVMe is also expanding. It is an emerging alternative in adjacent form factors that compete for the same workloads.
• OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA): OFA develops and maintains the open-source RDMA software stack (used in NVMe over RDMA transports such as RoCE and iWARP). It is an adjacent software-standards community that enables one of NVMe's fabric transports and has overlapping technical scope.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/nvmexpress
• YouTubeyoutube.com/channel/UCc-fBI-VCJnRr-MoDTBffUQ
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/nvmexpress

Compliance3 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles13 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about NVM Express