Axiowave Networks, a three-year-old company developing "intelligent" equipment for metro and core carrier and service provider backbones, closed $45 million in Series C funding last week, bringing total funding to date to $96 million.

The round was co-led by new investor Argonaut Private Equity and existing investors Gainesborough Investments, Axiowave Founder and Chairman Ray Stata, Founder, President and CEO Mukesh Chatter and other private investors. The new funding will be used to grow the company's product, sales and support teams, the company says.

Axiowave products are in several carrier labs, the company says. The carriers Axiowave is working with have already projected capital expenditures for products of the type Axiowave is developing, the company says.

Axiowave is still tight-lipped on product details. But they claim that service providers will be able to reduce capital and operational expenditures with its technology by maximizing capacity utilization of their existing network assets.

The company is located in Marlborough, Mass. Chatter was founder of Nexabit Networks, a developer of gigabit routers for service providers, which Lucent acquired in 1999 for $900 million.

Lucent subsequently killed the product obtained from this acquisition due to lack of demand and sagging financials, which prompted a product line consolidation.