OTTAWA -- Innovance Networks Inc. is set to announce today that it has landed
a huge financing deal that will make it Canada's best-funded technology startup
to date.
Innovance, an Ottawa-based fibre-optic networking company, will announce that
it will receive $88-million in its latest round of venture capital from seven
major institutional investors and two of its industry's biggest players.
In December, 2000, the startup got a round of financing worth $115-million
-- at the time the largest single deal for a private Canadian technology company.
Innovance, founded less than two years ago, had also landed $30-million in
seed financing shortly after it opened its doors. It has now attracted an astounding
$233-million in those three rounds of financing, more than any other Canadian-based
tech startup.
"We are excited by the level of customer interest in our solution," Peter Allen,
Innovance's chief executive officer said in a press release to announce the
deal.
The company said it will use the latest pool of money largely to take its suite
of products to market.
The Innovance deal involves big U.S. institutional investors and fibre-optic
giants JDS Uniphase Corp. of Ottawa and San Jose, Calif. and Corning Inc. of
Corning, N.Y.