Other new investors included AT&T and Rahi Systems.

Operating independently, following a spin-off from Brocade in August 2017, Lumina Networks will use the funds to support the development of new products and innovative solutions using the Lumina SDN Controller powered by OpenDaylight and for expansion of business in Europe and Japan.

"This investment by both Verizon and AT&T demonstrates the strategic importance of open source networking to the automation and digitization of their networks," said Andrew Coward, Founder and CEO of Lumina Networks. "We understand the value of our mission to take open source networking out of the labs of our customers and into production deployment. This funding will enable us to reach a wider customer base and realize the industry vision of easily deployable open source software-defined networking (SDN)."

The investment follows strong take-up of the Lumina SDN Controller by network operators in the first nine months of operations, with revenues more than double their pre-spin-off Brocade levels.

"SDN has emerged as a key architectural model in delivering the promised goals of next generation wireless networks such as 5G by enabling high speeds and low latency at lower cost points," said Alexander Khalin, Director at Verizon Ventures. "Open source is instrumental to Verizon's digital transformation, and the team at Lumina Networks has built world-class, carrier grade products and solutions in this space and truly understands how to effectively work with network operators on their transformational journey. We look forward to their continued success in this field."

"SDN is at the heart of our network transformation, and we've committed to virtualizing and software-controlling 75% of our core network functions by 2020," said Chris Rice, Senior Vice President, AT&T Labs, Domain 2.0 Architecture and Design. "Lumina's leadership and work in OpenDaylight is important to creating a scalable software-defined network. Their open source business model is what our industry is moving to. Much of our future network will be powered by open source software, such as our white box initiative, and we're excited to help drive innovation and collaboration in this space."

"Lumina presents a hardware agnostic approach of bringing virtualization and control semantics to the Network. Lumina's leadership brings strong expertise with a software defined approach for complex services provider (network, cloud & web) and enterprise networks," said Tarun Raisoni, CEO at Rahi Systems.

About Lumina Networks

Lumina Networks believes the future is open software networks where service providers are in control of their development. Lumina is the catalyst that brings open software networking out of the lab and into the live network. We develop open source platforms and provide NetDev Services to jointly deliver production systems and to transfer know-how in Agile Software Development methods.

About Verizon Ventures

Verizon Ventures is the corporate venture capital unit of Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, NASDAQ: VZ) and invests in promising entrepreneurial companies that are tackling some of today's biggest technology challenges. With a collaborative approach to commercialization, Verizon Ventures is focused on helping companies connect financial resources with strategic, non-investment business functions necessary to deliver successful outcomes. Verizon Ventures partners with companies to help them scale substantively to impact society and lead to new markets. Over the last decade, Verizon Ventures has invested in more than 50 companies covering a range of industries and technologies. For more information, visit www.verizonventures.com and follow @verizonventures.