Irvine, CA, January 14, 2003 – SolarFlare Communications, Inc., a developer of high-performance semiconductor products for physical layer connectivity, today announced it has closed its second round of financing. Anthem Venture Partners led the $17.5 million round, which also included previous investors Foundation Capital and Sequoia Capital, and new investors Intel Capital, Miramar Venture Partners, and Windward Ventures. The new capital will be used to help bring the company’s initial products to production. SolarFlare has now raised $29.8 million in two rounds of funding.
"The exceptional round in current tight market conditions reflects the value of SolarFlare's deep intellectual property and product opportunities in migrating enterprise LANs to the next level,“ said William Woodward, Managing Director and founder of Anthem Venture Partners. “The company is clearly driving the industry towards creating open solutions for 10Gbps Ethernet over structured copper wiring through technical leadership and by making important contributions to standards bodies.”
SolarFlare’s architectural and algorithmic techniques simplify the complexity of building high-performance physical layer (PHY) transceivers. The company is currently applying its expertise to building PHY products for running 10Gbps Ethernet over structured Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) copper cabling for Local Area Network (LAN) applications. This technology, called 10GBASE-T, solves bandwidth bottlenecks in data-centers and wiring-closets of enterprise LANs where gigabit Ethernet aggregation is being used for switch, server, and storage connectivity over inexpensive UTP cabling. The IEEE 802.3 Working Group, which develops standards for Ethernet based LANs, recently approved a Study Group to investigate the development of a standard for 10GBASE-T technology.
“The key issue to be addressed is backward compatibility with the existing infrastructure, tools, installation practices, and skill sets of corporate IT staff, “ said George Zimmerman, CTO and CEO at SolarFlare. “Our products are designed to work on the same LANs that support 1000BASE-T (1Gbps Ethernet over UTP cabling) today.”
SolarFlare Communications is a developer of high-performance semiconductor solutions for system connectivity. SolarFlare’s communications architectures and algorithms improve data rates, costs, and distances and enable existing networks to migrate to next generation speeds without replacing the physical infrastructure. SolarFlare is headquartered in Irvine, California, and may be contacted at 1-949-581-6830 or at info@solarflare.com. Additional company information is available at www.solarflare.com.
Anthem Venture Partners is an early stage venture capital firm located in Santa Monica, CA. Anthem supports uniquely talented entrepreneurs through a combination of venture capital financing, hands on operational experience, strategic advice and access to a broad network of investors, partners and customers throughout the world. Anthem invests primarily in firms engaged in the following industries: communications, semiconductors, enterprise software and biotechnology. Anthem can be contacted through our web site at http://www.anthemvp.com.
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Editor Contact:
Ahmet Tuncay
SolarFlare Communications, Inc.
1-949-581-6830 ext. 2100
SolarFlare Communications is a trademark of SolarFlare Communications, Inc. All other trademarks and company names are the property of their respective owners.