Big Bear Networks Raises $40M

MILPITAS, Calif., Jan. 31 -- Big Bear Networks, an optical networking provider designing "photronic signal processing" products for next-generation 10- and 40-gigabit-per-second optical carrier equipment, has raised $40 million in its second round of private funding.

Lead investors are Austin Ventures, and Menlo Ventures. Other participants in the current funding round include Oak Investment Partners and original investors Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital, which together invested $20 million in Big Bear in June 2000.

Venu Shamapant, partner at Austin Ventures, and Thomas Bredt, managing director of Menlo Ventures, have joined Big Bear's board of directors.

Big Bear, which will announce its product architecture in the first half of 2002, is developing electro-optical module and subassembly products that remove the physical-layer constraints associated with tapping into and maximizing the bandwidth-transmission capabilities of fiber-optic media. The products will tightly couple previously separate electrical and photonic functions to provide active monitoring and dynamic compensation of the optical data path. Target customers are system vendors supplying the fundamental switching and transmission infrastructure for the public network: optical switches, DWDM-based SONET/SDH grooming switches, terabit-class IP/MPLS routers and SONET multiplexing and transmission equipment.