“Winning large Tier 1 customers like Cisco is always a challenging task. Having Menlo and their large fund firmly behind us tipped the scale in our favor. Their financial support and guidance made the Menlo team a critical partner in our success at Cavium.”

 - Syed Ali, CEO

Intelligent networks will need more powerful brains.

Cavium Networks started by speeding up security, and will finish by building Silicon Valley's next major semiconductor company.

Menlo Ventures began investigating the security processor market in early 2002 with the premise that as networking speeds continued to increase, general purpose CPUs would be insufficient to handle ever-increasing processing needs. Products from all public and private companies were evaluated, and assistance was received from design teams at Cisco and F5, who were doing their own research.

Menlo discovered that Cavium Networks was the only company designing security processors using full custom design methodologies. Cavium's full-custom chips promised to be smaller, run faster, use less power, and cost less to manufacture. All competitors were using an ASIC design approach, which yielded chips with inferior performance. Furthermore, Cavium had an exceptional CEO, Syed Ali, and stellar software and IC design teams. Menlo partner John Jarve led the Company's April 2002 round of funding and joined the Company's board of directors.

A key challenge facing Cavium in the early days was credibility with the largest and most important potential customers. After the technology bubble burst in 2001, large companies such a Cisco and Nokia refused to consider products from start-up companies like Cavium. They had seen too many start-ups go out of business, including some of their own suppliers.

Menlo Ventures used its $1.5 billion fund to Cavium's advantage, guaranteeing future funding commitments and the financial stability of the Company. Additionally, John met with multiple customers, including Cisco, to pledge financial support and help the Company secure design wins.

Today, Cavium is the leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor processors for intelligent networking, communications, and security applications. Cavium has over 150 customers including Cisco, Nokia, F5 Networks, Nortel, Fujitsu, and Sun Microsystems.

On May 2, 2007, Cavium completed a very successful IPO on the NASDAQ Global Market with Menlo Ventures as the largest shareholder.