Optovation Raises $20M

OTTAWA -- Optovation (http://www.optovation.com), adeveloper of advanced fiber optical modules, today announced the completion ofa US $20 million Series B round of funding. This brings the total venturecapital raised by the company to US $34 million. The funding will be used tocomplete current product development and evolve the company's activities insales and product delivery. The lead investors in this round were Altamira Investment Services Inc.,a leading Canadian investment firm with over $6.5 billion under management(http://www.altamira.com) and Newbury Ventures (http://www.newburyven.com), an experiencedinternational VC headquartered in the Bay Area that has made over 100technology investments throughout the world. Joining existing investors NewEnterprise Associates (http://www.nea.com) and Redwood Ventures (http://www.redwoodvp.com)in this round, new investors include Desjardins Venture Capital Group, theOttawa office of Investissement Desjardins, Inc. (http://www.desjardins.com/ang) andBMO Nesbitt Burns Equity Partners (http://corporate.bmo.com/equitypartners). "Optovation has a strong value proposition for enhancing opticalnetworks," said Ken Wigglesworth, Venture Partner with Newbury Ventures andPrincipal for its affiliate, Eagle One Ventures. "Dense wavelength divisionmultiplexing systems need to offer "SONET-like" monitoring capabilities whilealso lowering their costs; the solution set from Optovation enables them to dothis. We are impressed that already more than a dozen systems customers haveexpressed interest in Optovation's products." Optovation