Aquantia, a US-based ethernet connectivity technology producer backed by corporates Cisco, GlobalFoundries, Intel, LSI and Xilinx, has raised $61.4m in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange.
The offering consisted of just over 6.8 million shares priced at $9.00 each, below the IPO’s $10 to $12 range.
Founded in 2004, Aquantia develops and produces integrated circuits for high-speed communications that are used for ethernet connectivity in communications infrastructure, easing bottlenecks in network bandwidth caused by heavy internet traffic.
The company had raised approximately $195m in funding, including $21m from a 2011 series E round featuring LSI, the semiconductor maker acquired by Broadcom in 2014, as well as existing backers New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Pinnacle Ventures and Venture Tech Alliance.
Russian state-owned vehicle Rusnano led the company’s $35m series F round the following year, and programmable logic equipment producer Xilinx led its $20m series G round in 2014.
Semiconductor foundry GlobalFoundries supplied $20m of a $37m round Aquantia closed in 2015 that included networking equipment producer Cisco’s corporate venturing unit, Cisco Investments.
Direct Equity Partners, an investment vehicle for financial services firm Credit Suisse, and Walden Riverwood Ventures also participated in the 2015 round, while semiconductor technology provider Intel’s corporate venturing unit, Intel Capital, had invested at an earlier stage.
GlobalFoundries was the only corporate investor to hold a share of the company sized at 5% or more, its stake being diluted from 10.3% to 8.2% in the offering. Hing Wong, a managing director of Walden International, is its largest shareholder and will own a 9% stake post-IPO.
Aquantia’s other prominent shareholders are Rusnano (8.8% post-IPO), Pinnacle Ventures (8.6%), Walden (7.8%) and Paxion Partners (5.4%). Greylock, Lightspeed and NEA had sold a total of $58m of shares to investors including Walden and Paxion in June 2017.
Morgan Stanley, Barclays Capital and Deutsche Bank Securities are the bookrunners for the offering while Needham & Company and Raymond James are co-managers. They have a 30-day option to buy another 1.02 million shares, which would boost the IPO’s size to $70.6m.
– Photo courtesy of Aquantia Corp.