Ekinops raises $20m to support its accelerating growth
Transaction managed by Clipperton Finance
PARIS, France – October 18, 2007 Ekinops, a leading provider of optical transport and DWDM solutions, announced today that it has raised $20 million of additional capital. This second round of financing was led by Odyssée Venture and included Apicap as well as existing investors Auriga Partners, Equitis, Siparex, Société Générale Asset Management and Ventech.
Ekinops is currently experiencing very strong growth due to a number of new customer wins from telecommunications carriers in North America and in Europe. The money raised will be used to strengthen Ekinops’ sales and customer support presence in these areas, to expand its operations and to capitalize on recent technological innovations.
“Fueled by the launch of the Ekinops 360 platform, we have been experiencing remarkable success in the optical transport market”, states Didier Bredy, CEO of Ekinops. “We will use the new funding to build on that success by further consolidating our customer support capabilities. Also, we are now in a very good position to accelerate our reach to carriers who need to build and scale their optical networks faster, achieve a quicker ROI, and react swiftly to the needs of their customers.”
“We are very pleased to have the backing of such reputable investors and this round demonstrates the faith in Ekinops as we penetrate further the rapidly-growing optical networking market. They see that this company is in a very strong position as demand for network capacity continues to rise, driven by applications such as video, storage, and Ethernet services”, concludes Bredy.
“The incredible demand for video over the Internet has convinced us that the Ekinops 360 platform will be a very strong contender in this booming market. We were impressed by Ekinops’ technological leadership, the relevance of its platform, and the high caliber of its management”, acknowledges Julien Andrieux, Investment Officer at Odyssée Venture.
Clipperton Finance, a corporate finance boutique focused on the high tech and media sectors, advised Ekinops through this round of financing.
About Ekinops
Ekinops is a provider of innovative optical transport, WDM and aggregation solutions for service providers and enterprise networks. Its advanced TDM technology enables the wire-speed aggregation and transport of multiple high-speed data channels using standard 2.5G and 10G signals, significantly lowering the cost of building and maintaining scalable optical networks. Ekinops’ carrier-grade solutions leverage expertise in 10G transmission, aggregation, and Forward Error Correction to allow carriers to increase transport capacity over dark fiber, CWDM, DWDM, SONET/SDH and IP networks. The company is headquartered in Lannion, France, with sales offices in Europe and the USA. More information about Ekinops is available at www.ekinops.net
About Clipperton Finance
Clipperton Finance is a European corporate finance boutique dedicated to the High Tech and Media industries. Clipperton is focused on start-up and advanced companies in the Software, Telecom, Components and Media/Internet spaces, advising them in their financial transactions: fundraising/capital increases and Mergers & Acquisitions. Over the past years the company and its team have managed to structure numerous high level international transactions in the European High Tech sector.