Aquantia, a developer of High Speed Ethernet connectivity solutions for cloud computing and large scale data center deployments, announced today it has completed a Series F financing of $35 million, with new investor RUSNANO leading the round, joined by current investors. RUSNANO will invest $25 million, and current and new investors will contribute $10 million to the financing round.
Aquantia successfully launched its industry-leading 40nm 10GBASE-T PHY chipset in 2011, as a critical ingredient to emerging LAN-on-Motherboard (LOM) platforms for new data center servers and switches. With Intel’s March 2012 launch of its Romley generation LOM server platforms, the 10GBASE-T interconnect market is now seeing an explosive uptick. According to Crehan Research, shipments of 10GBASE-T in Data Center switching and servers will see more than a seven-fold increase from 2011 to 2012, reaching a total of approximately 6.5 million ports in 2013, and almost 20 million the following year.
Aquantia will establish a new design center in Russia. The Russian R&D center will support the headquarter Silicon Valley R&D group in chip design and software development, as well as product testing.
“Aquantia is the only 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) silicon provider to meet our investment criteria in the high-speed data center interconnect space,” said RUSNANO managing director Sergey Polikarpov. “We believe big data and global data center traffic are going to see a tremendous swell in the next several years, and Aquantia’s technology is essential to improving server performance while realizing greater cost efficiencies. This is a premium opportunity for us to participate in the market growth and its rewards.”
“NEA is excited to continue to support Aquantia as the company expands operations to meet the ever-increasing demand for its superior technology,” added NEA partner Rohini Chakravarthy. “We see network capacity build-up expected to support 15 billion connected devices by 2015. This represents a tremendous opportunity for Aquantia.”
“This past year has been tremendously gratifying, as it has been the culmination of hard work, innovation and powerful partnering in the 10GE and LOM space,” explained Aquantia’s president and CEO Faraj Aalaei. “We are truly ecstatic about the takeoff of Intel’s Romley platform and what it means as a watershed event for the near-term ubiquity of 10GBASE-T in the data center as well as future opportunity across the Enterprise space. This is what we have been working toward, and our funding partners in this and all previous rounds have positioned us for tremendous delivery success.”
Go to http://www.aquantia.com/news-and-media/ for footage of recent discussions on 10GBASE-T, and follow Aquantia on Twitter for ongoing updates on 10Gigabit Ethernet connectivity in the data center and cloud computing environments.
About Aquantia
Aquantia’s 10Gigabit Ethernet ICs are at the heart of cloud computing and large-scale data center deployments taking place today. This market segment is going through a very fast transition, with astounding growth in the total amount of compute power and the move to faster connectivity. This has in turn led to a new paradigm for 10Gigabit Ethernet all across the ecosystem. With its 10GBASE-T silicon products, Aquantia delivers to its OEM customers the most versatile and highest performance 10Gigabit Ethernet connectivity solution while providing lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Located in Silicon Valley, Aquantia is a venture-backed company, with strong tier-1 VCs and strategic investor support. For more information, visit www.aquantia.com.
About RUSNANO
RUSNANO was founded in March 2011 as an open joint stock company through reorganization of state corporation Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies. RUSNANO’s mission is to develop the Russian nanotechnology industry through co-investment in nanotechnology projects with substantial economic potential or social benefit. The Government of the Russian Federation owns 100 percent of the shares in RUSNANO. Anatoly Chubais is CEO and chairman of the Executive Board of RUSNANO.
Work to establish nanotechnology infrastructure and training for nanotechnology specialists, formerly conducted by the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies, has been entrusted to the Fund for Infrastructure and Educational Programs, a non-commercial fund also established through reorganization of the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies.
