Irvine chip startup Solarflare Communications Inc. on Monday announced that it raised $44 million in its fourth round of venture funding.
Investors included Westport, Conn.-based Oak Investment Partners, Britain’s Acacia Capital Partners and Santa Monica-based Anthem Venture Partners.
Past Solarflare investors include Corona del Mar’s Miramar Venture Partners and Intel Corp.’s venture arm, among others.
The round is made up of $32 million in venture dollars and $12 million in what Solarflare called “debt financing.”
Solarflare is one of Orange County’s best-funded startups, with roughly $180 million raised to date.
This is its second big funding this year. Solarflare raised $26 million in June.
The company, which has some 80 workers here, plans to use the money to ramp up the production of its second-generation chips.
“This series D round is extremely important, as it will enable us to ramp production of our second-generation products and make the development investments for our next round of PHY and controller products,” said Chief Executive Russell Stern. “The latest investment allows us to support the ship dates of our customers.”
Solarflare makes chips that allow faster networks to link with slower ones, saving on power and replacement costs for companies.
It has landed several design wins and started shipping chips to Dell Inc., Irvine’s SMC Networks Inc. and Taiwan’s Accton Technology Corp., among others.
The company’s potential customers include big networking gear makers, such as Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp.
The company is on track for a potential initial public offering in early 2010, Stern said.
Solarflare has been working to shore up its compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and recently upgraded its internal software in order to automate the tracking and shipping of its chips.
