Airgo Networks Raises $25MAirgo Networks Raises $25M

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Airgo Networks, a developer of innovative wireless solutions, today announced closing a private equity investment of $25 million, led by Oak Investment Partners. The funds will be used to initiate volume shipment of its Wi-Fi chips, the most advanced in the industry, in early 2004. Airgo's chipset is based on the company's innovative Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology that recently was named by EE Times as "the most influential radio technology of the next few years."

To date, the company has secured $77 million in funding. All of its previous venture capital investors, Accel Partners, Nokia Venture Partners, OVP and Sevin Rosen Fund, also participated in this round. Bandel Carano, a general partner from Oak Investment Partners has joined the company's board.

"In a single product generation, Airgo has far surpassed the performance and application capabilities of all other chipset offerings in the wireless LAN and wireless home video categories," said Bandel Carano, general partner of Oak Investment Partners. "Airgo's technology delivers dramatically higher Wi-Fi performance at competitive prices. Oak is confident that Airgo MIMO solutions will be the long-term wireless chipset market winners."

The MIMO Breakthrough

Until now, multipath, the natural distortion of radio waves, has been the bane of radio performance. Airgo's MIMO technology takes advantage of this natural phenomenon instead of fighting against it, as all other radio technologies have done for the past 70 years. As a result, Airgo's MIMO products double existing Wi-Fi rates to 108 Mbps per channel, while remaining 100 percent interoperable and backwards compatible with all existing Wi-Fi standards. In head-to-head testing, Airgo MIMO enhanced Wi-Fi also enables customers to have a coverage area that is three to ten times that of competing WLAN chipsets, resulting in an order-of-magnitude increase in performance and coverage.

"Airgo's innovative technology enables many new wireless video and data applications in homes and businesses," said Greg Raleigh, president and CEO of Airgo Networks. "Leading consumer electronics and data networking companies are preparing now to bring products incorporating our chipset to market in 2004. We are pleased to see our MIMO enhanced 802.11 product line as the centerpiece of their exciting plans for creating robust wireless multimedia home and business networks."

Airgo Networks