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Centec Networks Closes $47 Million Series E Financing Round Led by China's National IC Fund
[September 21, 2016]

Centec Networks Closes $47 Million Series E Financing Round Led by China's National IC Fund


Centec Networks, a leading innovator of Ethernet switching silicon and SDN white box solutions, today announced that it has closed a $47 million Series E funding round led by China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund (CICF), a national fund established to help develop IC technology companies in China.

Founded in 2005, Centec supports an open-networking strategy that has become increasingly popular among data centers, enterprises and carriers who want the most flexible and cost-effective path from 1GE to 10GE, 40GE and 100GE networking capabilities. The company has raised $30 million in previous funding rounds, developed four generations of switching silicon, and has achieved double-digit quarterly growth for the past 3 years. Proceeds from its Series E funding round will be used to develop new products and to scale the company's sales and marketing operations across the globe, especially North America. CICF is joined in the round by existing investor China Electronics Corporation (CEC) through its China Electronics Innovations Fund, which led the company's prior funding round.

"This funding round further establishes Centec as one of the top global sources of Ethernet switching silicon, and will enable us to meet growing product demand, accelerate innovation, and launch a new product family for the rapidly growing SDN white box market," said James Sun, CEO of Centec Networks. "The CICF investment also reinforces our position as a leading innovator in the worldwide market for Ethernet switching silicon, and a valued partner for customers entering the Chinese market."

"Centec has emerged as a leading competitor in a segment dominated worldwide by a single vendor and has developed impressive switch chips with competitive features using a fraction of the funding a U.S. company would require," sad Bob Wheeler, principal analyst at The Linley Group. "The additional funding led by CICF will further strengthen its technology and market leadership in China and fuel its major expansion beyond China into the global market."



"Centec is one of the key global vendors of Ethernet switching silicon and emblematic of the growing strength of China's local silicon industry," said Fan Zhiwen, president of network business unit of Fiberhome. "We're pleased to see the company's high growth in recent years and deeper engagement with Fiberhome. We believe this new funding will further fuel Centec's growth and look forward to continuing collaboration with the company in the future."

"The market for Ethernet switching silicon is an important one with a very high barrier to entry," said Lu Jun, President of SINO IC Capital (the official investment agency of CICF). "Centec is the national champion in this domain with solid achievements in product deployment and customer engagement over the past years. The prior investment from CEC brought rich business and marketing development resources to Centec, and we believe CICF's investment will further strengthen the company's position as it enters this next stage of rapid growth and market expansion."


Centec supports an open-networking strategy that enables worldwide customers to select the silicon, hardware and operating system solutions they need in each layer of the networking stack. The company has developed and released multiple product generations including switch silicon for 1GE10GE, 40GE and 100GE applications, with OCP's (News - Alert) Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) to ease the integration into both commercial and open source Network Operating System(NOS). Centec has a history of success delivering productized switch platform based on either a commercial or open source NOS for global vendors to integrate and customize for SDN and Open Networking applications.,

About Centec

Centec Networks provides innovative switching silicon and white box solutions that improve SDN deployment while empowering it for carrier, enterprise and data center networks. Leveraging a high-performance open SDN architecture, Centec enables seamless migration from the traditional L2, L3 and MPLS/MPLS-TP architecture to the new SDN era while solving some of SDN's biggest challenges. Centec and its customers are redefining the future of network switching. For more details, please visit the Centec website at http://www.centecnetworks.com.

About CICF

CICF was established in September 2014 to support the growth of the IC industry in China and enable the integration of the IC supply chain's ecosystem there. With shareholders including China's Ministry of Finance, China Development Bank and China Mobile (News - Alert) Communications Corporation, the CICF has investments in developers of semiconductor technologies, an area of national strategic interest to the Chinese government.


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