Updated: Provigent raises $3 million in additional capital for wireless broadband chips

Wireless broadband chip maker Provigent has raised $3 million in additional capital to accelerate its goal of getting its wireless transmission technology built into a wide variety broadband infrastructure.

Stata Venture Partners, headed by Analog Devices founder Ray Stata, will increase its investment to $4 million as part of Provigent’s $20 million fourth round of capital. Previously, Stata had invested $1 million in the round.

Other investors include Sequoia Capital, Pitango Venture Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, Ascend Technology Ventures, Magma Venture Partners, Delta Ventures, and Andrew Viterbi, co-founder of Qualcomm.

The Santa Clara, Calif., company has now raised $41 million since 2000.  Provigent focuses on the cellular backhaul infrastructure market as well as fixed wireless transmission networks and private wireless networks.

Ran Soffer, vice president of marketing, says that the company’s chips are used in the backhaul infrastructure equipment that transfers voice, data, and video signals from cellular base stations to the core network. Those chips can ship data at 622 megabits per second and the company is working on faster chips now.

Provigent has 60 employees, with the engineering team in Israel. The company has 40 customers among broadband infrastructure equipment providers, Soffer said.