Netronome raises $23MM from DFJ, Tudor, Raptor, Top Tech

Netronome Secures $23 Million in Series D Funding. The financing round was led by new investor DFJ Esprit, and included previous investors Raptor Group, Tudor Ventures and Top Technology. The round also included investment from industry luminaries - FORE Systems founders Robert Sansom and Eric Cooper, and Analysys founder David Cleevely.

Netronome is a leading developer of highly programmable semiconductor products that are used for intelligent flow processing in network and communications devices. Netronome’s solutions include network flow processors and acceleration cards that scale from 10 to 100 Gbps.

“Many customers share our vision for intelligent and secure networking platforms based on x86 processors. More importantly they recognize that network flow processors are the key component in scaling these designs,” said Niel Viljoen, founder and CEO of Netronome. “This funding will allow us to successfully manage our growth by providing the additional sales support, design assistance and manufacturing supply required by our increasing number of design wins.”

Netronome’s solutions include tightly integrated network flow processors and acceleration cards that scale to more than 20 Gbps. They are used in carrier-grade and enterprise-class communications products, as well as virtualized servers and appliances that require deep packet inspection, flow analysis and content processing, all at very high speeds for millions of simultaneous flows. Netronome is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with core operations in Santa Clara, California and Boxborough, Massachusetts, and international operations in the United Kingdom, China and South Africa.

Niel Viljoen
Chief Executive Officer

Niel Viljoen has been active in the computing and networking equipment industry for the past 20 years. Primary areas of focus include IP, ATM, security and system design. Before becoming involved with Netronome on a full-time basis in July 2003, Niel was an active business angel, investing in, amongst others, Nujira, Intune and Azuro. He serves on the board of Nujira.

Between 2000 and 2001, Niel was CTO of the Marconi group. Niel joined Marconi after the acquisition of FORE Systems, where he was part of the management team. At FORE, Niel's roles included Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Service Provider Division, Senior Vice President Product Marketing, Vice President Engineering, Senior Director and General Manager of the Adapter group. Niel joined FORE through the acquisition of Nemesys Ltd, where he was the CEO. Nemesys developed a range of video encoding devices for broadband networks. Prior to that, Niel developed and created a number of businesses, developing products like network security devices and large distributed memory processor complexes.

Niel has received a number of industry awards. He has attended the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa) and Cambridge University (UK).