Cisco to acquire Israel’s Leaba Semiconductor for $320 million

Cisco Systems announced its intention to acquire Israel’s Leaba Semiconductor, a designer of networking chips, for $320 million in cash plus additional incentives to retain employees. The news follows Cisco’s recent announcement of the acquisition of Cliqr Technologies Inc. for about $260 million to enhance offerings in cloud computing management software and services.

“Leaba is a team with a strong and successful track record of designing leading edge networking semiconductors that provide innovative solutions to address significant infrastructure challenges,” Cisco executive Rob Salvagno said in a blog post. The deal will also include assumed equity awards and retention-based incentives, Salvagno said.

Leaba is currently in stealth mode, so it’s not revealing any products. When the deal closes, the Leaba team will report to Core Hardware Group, led by Cisco senior vice president, Ravi Cherukuri, according to the blog post.

“By combining Leaba’s semiconductor expertise with the Cisco engineering team, we will accelerate our plans for Cisco’s next generation product portfolio and bring new capabilities to the market faster,”.

This is not the time the Leaba founding team has launched and sold a chip production company. The founding team, which consists of CEO Eyal Dagan and CTO Ofer Eini sold Dune Networks to Broadcom for $178 million in 2009.