Cisco, Dell invest in wireless chipmaker

Ubicom announced Tuesday that it has completed a $16.9 million fourth round of funding that included financing from past investors such as Cisco Systems and Dell Ventures, the venture capital arm of Dell Computer. Other previous investors that contributed include JatoTech Ventures, Walden International, Vertex Venture Holdings, MSD Capital and Mayfield. Mountain View, Calif.-based Ubicom has raised $77 million to date. The new funding will be used for product development and sales expansion and is expected to carry Ubicom until the end of 2002, when the company expects to reach profitability. Ubicom makes chips for wireless and wireline networking equipment as well as routers, modems and PC peripherals that can run on a variety of networking standards including Bluetooth, Ethernet, HomePlug and 802.11b. --Sam Ames, Special to ZDNet News