Xelerated gears up for U.S. move with $12M in funding

Xelerated gears up for U.S. move with $12M in funding
LONDON — Xelerated Packet Devices AB (Stockholm, Sweden), a startup company developing network processors for the OC-768 40-Gbit/s router and switcher market, has completed a $12 million funding round with Atlas Venture, Alta Partners and Startupfactory, a specialist Swedish venture capital company.

The money will be used to bring the company's Xelerator family of chips to market, and to help transfer the company's headquarters from Sweden to the United States, according to Johan Boerje, Xelerated's chief executive officer.

"It has taken a bit longer than we expected, but the amount is what we were looking for," said Boerje. "It means we can bring the products to market: the X40 packet processor, the T40 traffic monitor chip and the associated software including development tools, APIs and control plane software."

Boerje said it was still not certain where in the United States Xelerated's headquarters would be, but that the company would retain its major engineering base in Sweden. He added that any lingering slowness in the market would not affect the future design-win prospects for his company's chips.

"This is because our chip is capable of handling multiple 10-Gbit/s data streams as well as 40-Gbit/s data streams," he said. Boerje said Xelerated was preparing to give a demonstration of the company's technology at the upcoming Network Processor Conference, which would showcase chip functionality implemented in a series of FPGAs on a development board.

Sven-Christer Nilsson, co-founder of Startupfactory and former chief executive officer of LM Ericsson, commented, "We welcome Atlas Venture and Alta Partners as new investors and members of Xelerated's board of directors. Their powerful networks and sector experience will contribute significantly to Xelerated's continued growth."