Ethernet chip startup raises $50M in Broadcom dispute

Article By : Peter Clarke

Ethernet chip startup Innovium has recently settled a legal dispute with its rival, Broadcom, allowing them to raise more than $50 million in venture capital.

Fabless semiconductor startup Innovium has recently settled a legal dispute with its rival, Broadcom, allowing them to raise more than $50 million in venture capital.

The details of the legal dispute with Broadcom and settlement were not disclosed but may hinge on the departure from that company of two of Innvoium's co-founders.

Innovium was founded by Rajiv Khemani, Puneet Agarwal and Mohammad Issa. Argawal and Issa were the lead architect and head of engineering, respectively, for Broadcom's Ethernet switching business. Khemani had been at Cavium for a decade and was chief operating officer prior to leaving in 2013.

However, the company appears to have plenty of cash to pursue its business plan with more than $50 million coming from Series A and Series B rounds conducted in 2015.

The Series A funding round in 1Q15 was led by venture capital firms Walden, Riverwood Ventures and Capricorn Investment Group, with participation from S-Cubed Capital and Qualcomm Ventures. Series B funding later in 2015 was led by Greylock Partners with participation from all existing investors. Concurrent with the funding rounds, Asheem Chandna of Greylock, Dipender Saluja of Capricorn, Lip-Bu Tan of Walden International, and Mark Stevens of S-Cubed joined Innovium's board of directors.

Innovium is focused on developing semiconductor solutions for Ethernet networking and has assembled an executive team with prior experience at leading companies including Broadcom, Cavium, Cisco, Dell, Ericsson, Intel and Juniper.

"Innovium has put together one of the industry's strongest Ethernet switching teams and they are uniquely qualified to partner with cloud providers and networking vendors to deliver the next generation of solutions," said Asheem Chandna, partner at Greylock Partners.