Brix Networks Completes Second Round of Financing; Funding for Communications Startup Totals $25 Million from Three Leading Venture Capital Firms from Boston and Silicon Valley.

Business/Technology Editors

BILLERICA, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 8, 2000

Brix Networks(SM), a company empowering carriers and Service Providers with the ability to deploy value-added Internet Protocol (IP) services, today announced it has secured $17 million in its second round of venture financing.

With funding totaling $25 million since the company's inception, this new round of capital will be used to expand Brix's development, marketing, and sales and service initiatives.

Lead investors in this second round of financing included Bedrock Capital Partners (Boston and San Francisco), Charles River Ventures (Waltham, Mass.), and ComVentures (Palo Alto, Calif.). The company's Board of Directors include Tom Pincince, President and CEO of Brix Networks; Rubin Gruber, Founder and Chairman of Sonus Networks; James McLean of Bedrock Capital Partners; Alan Taffel, previously VP of Marketing of UUNET; and Mike Zak of Charles River Ventures.

Tom Pincince founded Brix Networks in July of 1999 with a group of senior staff from GTE Internetworking, Newbridge Networks, Nortel Networks, and Sun Microsystems. Prior to founding Brix Networks, Tom was the founder of New Oak Communications which was acquired by Nortel/Bay Networks and whose products are now sold as the Contivity Extranet VPN switch.

"As investors, we look for companies with outstanding, seasoned management teams who are positioning their organizations to be in a unique space within a growing market," said Mike Zak, Charles River Ventures. "The work Brix Networks has done with customers so far, has clearly established both an overwhelming market need and a broad acceptance for their solution. We are excited to continue our work with Brix Networks as they build towards becoming a powerful industry leader in this area."

"Brix Networks helps Service Providers unlock the revenue potential of their high performance IP networks," observes Tom Pincince, President and CEO of Brix Networks. "We provide the product and services required to enable the migration of business-critical applications to the Internet."

ABOUT BRIX NETWORKS

Brix Networks provides the key to enabling the transition of today's company-critical networks and applications to the high-speed, high-service public IP backbones of tomorrow by giving carriers and service providers the solutions to ensure the quality and performance of Internet-based services. The Brix solution offers carriers and Service Providers a flexible, scalable, and integrated system to provide the business practices necessary to drive revenue with the deployment of new, high-value IP services.

Founded in the summer of 1999 with executive and development staff from 3COM (Nasdaq: COMS), GTE (NYSE: GTE), Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU), Nortel (NYSE: NT), Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW), and UUNET (Nasdaq: WCOM), Brix Networks has grown to more than 50 employees today. The Billerica, Massachusetts-based Company is privately owned and venture capital funded. For more information visit the company's Web site at www.brixnet.com

Brix Networks is a servicemark of Brix Networks.