Hyperchip Third Round Financing

Montreal-based Hyperchip Inc., The Petabit Routing Company™, secured US$67 million (C$100 million) in its third round of venture capital financing, completed on September 27, 2000. This brings the total amount raised since its founding in 1997 to US$100 million (C$147 million), making it Canada’s largest funding package for a pre-revenue company. Lead investor Optical Capital Group, a technology and optical networking accelerator based in Columbia, Md., was joined in the third round by nine new investors. All investors from Hyperchip’s previous round, including Montreal’s Technocap Inc., also participated in the latest funding. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter was lead placement agent, with RBC Dominion Securities as co-agent.

Hyperchip has pioneered major advances in key computing and communication technologies. It is the leader in petabit scalability for the WAN, and is driving the merger of the world’s networks to provide end-to-end, multi-gigabit connections between users, servers and storage, regardless of distance.

Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP (previously Goodman Phillips & Vineberg LLP) in Montreal was lead counsel to Hyperchip Inc., with a team that included Shahir Guindi, Richard Cherney, Janet Ferrier and Genevieve Marchand. US counsel to Hyperchip was Kevin Barry of Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault LLP in Boston. Sylvie Hebert and Clemens Mayr of Ogilvy Renault’s Montreal office acted as general corporate counsel to Hyperchip. Bruce Hatfield, Q.C., of Cox Hanson O’Reilly Matheson in Fredericton acted as Hyperchip’s New Brunswick corporate counsel.