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Atlanta
Business Chronicle.
Movaz
raises $60 million
Fiber optics equipment maker Movaz Networks Inc. has raised a $60
million round of funding primarily from its earlier investors, brining
the company's lifetime funding to $142 million.
Norcross-based
Movaz closed the round in late April. The round, Movaz's third,
included $50 million in equity funding and another $10 million in
non-equity.
Investors
in this current round, Movaz's third, include Oak Investment Partners,
Worldview Technology Partners, Menlo Ventures, Meritech Capital
Partners, Anschutz Investment Company, Telus Ventures, Silicon Valley
BancVentures Inc. and GATX Ventures Inc.
The
$60 million round is one of the largest in Georgia history.
"We
are very pleased to have the support of such a stellar group of
investors," CEO Bijan Khosravi said in a prepared release.
Some
of the investors in this round included West Coast venture capitalists
that CEO Bijan Khosravi knew from his previous post as CEO of a
Silicon Valley optics company, which later merged with Redbacks
Networks Inc. in a deal valued at $4.3 billion.
Two-year-old
Movaz plans to spend this $60 million round on further development
of its suite of optical equipment products, which Khosravi says
cost half as much as similar equipment made by industry giants like
Lucent Technologies Inc., Nortel Networks Corp. and Cisco Systems
Inc.
Telecommunications
companies spent a whopping $20 billion on fiber optics in 2000,
just before the dot-com bubble burst and telecom spending tumbled
to about $16 billion in 2001 due to overstock and fallen demand
for new equipment, according to research by Gartner Inc.
Telecom
companies are expected to spend about $16 billion this year, well
below historical spending figures, but that doesn't phase Khosravi.
He is convinced that Movaz will come out on top when the fiber optics
market recovers.
"I
believe in the curve model, and we are at the bottom of that curve
right now," Khosravi said in a recent interview. "There
are upswings coming."
Movaz
pulled in about $1 million in revenues during 2001, and Khosravi
has said he expects that figure to jump into the "tens of millions"
by the end of 2002.
The
company has grown to 300 employees since it was founded two years
ago.
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