chelsioThe transition to high-speed 10-gigabit per second networking adapters has spawned a lot of broadband communications companies. One of them, Chelsio, has raised $17 million to expand its business of making 10 gigabit Ethernet network adapters, chips and storage solutions.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Chelsio designs a family of custom chips dubbed the Terminator (T3) ASIC. It uses those chips in network adapter cards for enterprise computers and storage devices. The storage devices include high-speed network-attached storage devices, computing clusters, server adapters, storage area network, video servers and other devices aimed at making corporate web communications faster.

The funding comes from existing investors New Enterprise Associates, Invesco Private Capital, Investor Growth Capital, LSI, NTT Finance, Vendanta Capital, Abacus Capital Group, Pacesetter Capital Group, Horizon Ventures, and one new participant, Mobile Internet Capital.

Chelsio chief executive Kianoosh Naghshineh said the new funding will be used for continued development of Chelsio’s 10GbE adapter products and expansion into new markets.  The company has more than 700 customers developing products for 150 different platforms. Revenues have been increasing 25 percent each quarter for the past few quarters. Naghshineh said he expects this new round of financing to take the company to profitability.