Airespace Secures $22 Million in Series C Financing; Fidelity Ventures Leads up-Round with Investment in Leading Wireless LAN Equipment Vendor.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 22, 2003 Airespace, Inc., today announced that it has secured $22 million in series C funding, bringing the total investment in the company to more than $38 million. Fidelity Ventures, the venture capital arm of Fidelity Investments(R), led the round. Airespace also announced the appointment of Anne Mitchell, partner at Fidelity Ventures, to Airespace's board of directors. Existing investors Battery Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Storm Ventures, Hotung Capital, and KTB KTB Keep Texas Beautiful (Austin, TX) KTB Korea Treasury Bond KTB Kick the Bucket KTB Kenyan Top Bar (beehives) KTB Keppel Tatlee Bank Ltd (commercial bank in Singapore) Ventures completed the oversubscribed Refers to connecting more users to a system than can be fully supported if all of them were using it at the same time. Networks and servers are almost always designed with some amount of oversubscription, counting on the fact that everybody does not need the service simultaneously. round. The latest investment marked a significant increase in valuation for Airespace, which began shipping its wireless LAN (WLAN See wireless LAN. WLAN - wireless local area network ) products this April and has already announced significant customer sales and a major OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) The rebranding of equipment and selling it. The term initially referred to the company that made the products (the "original" manufacturer), but eventually became widely used to refer to the organization that buys the products and agreement with NEC (NEC Corporation, Tokyo, www.nec.com, www.necus.com) An electronics conglomerate known in the U.S. for its monitors. In Japan, it had the lion's share of the PC market until the late 1990s (see PC 98). NEC was founded in Tokyo in 1899 as Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. . This new funding will fuel Airespace's continued growth in the enterprise WLAN market and fully funds the company to break-even. "Fidelity Ventures has significant experience with enterprise IT infrastructure," said Anne Mitchell, partner at Fidelity Ventures. "WLANs have been strongly received in the home networking and SOHO Soho (sōhō`, sə–), district of Westminster, London, England, known for its continental restaurants. Once a fashionable quarter, it became popular among writers and artists in the 19th cent. markets, and we now are seeing uptake among major enterprises. Airespace is best positioned to serve the rapidly growing enterprise sector based on its superior product architecture, strong customer traction, and clear strategic vision. Combined with the smart fiscal approach of its management team, we believe the company is best positioned to lead the enterprise WLAN systems market." "Fidelity Ventures' knowledge of real-world enterprise networking environments makes them a valuable partner, helping us build the preeminent brand in this market," said Brett Galloway, chief executive officer and president of Airespace. "Airespace has adopted a fundamentally sound strategy of complementing the existing Ethernet infrastructure rather that attempting to replace it," said David Passmore, research director at The Burton Group. "Airespace has distinguished itself from other WLAN vendors by incorporating dynamic RF intelligence in its system, helping to solve the hard wireless problems hampering widespread adoption in the enterprise." About Airespace, Inc. Airespace is a market leader in the design and development of wireless networking platforms that support business-critical applications. The company's AireWave Director(TM) Software provides dynamic RF intelligence for network optimization, air tight security, seamless mobility, and support for real-time applications, such as voice. With Airespace, enterprises can maximize the value of mobility by putting the air space to work. For more information on Airespace and its products, visit www.airespace.com or call 408-635-2000. About Fidelity Ventures Fidelity Ventures, the venture capital arm of Fidelity Investments, has actively invested private equity in emerging information technology and telecommunications companies for more than 30 years. Many Fidelity Ventures-backed companies have gone public and/or have been merged with industry leaders, including: MCI (1) (Media Control Interface) A high-level programming interface from Microsoft and IBM for controlling multimedia devices. It provides commands and functions to open, play and close the device. (2) (Microwave Communications Inc. (now Worldcom (Nasdaq:WCWEQ)), Continental Cablevision (now Comcast (Nasdaq:CMCSA)), Teleport (now part of AT&T (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :T)), Nextel (Nasdaq:NXTL), GeoTel (now part of Cisco (Nasdaq:CSCO CSCO Cisco Systems Incorporated (stock symbol) CSCO Chief Supply Chain Officer )), Nexabit Networks (now part of Lucent (NYSE:LU)), ONI Systems and Wavesmith Networks (both now part of Ciena (Nasdaq:CIEN CIEN Ciena Corporation (stock symbol) )) and COLT (Nasdaq:COLT). Fidelity Ventures has offices in Boston and London, and can be contacted at www.fidelityventures.com. |
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