Millennium Technology Ventures Announces $45 Million in 2004 Investments

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 3, 2005--Millennium Technology Ventures, L.P., a New York-based private equity fund, announced today that it had made significant progress during 2004 in its strategy of acquiring high-quality individual venture capital assets in the secondary market. Over the course of the year, the fund, its affiliates, and its partners, made investments with aggregate face value of approximately $45 million. Most of these investments were acquired through Millennium's ongoing initiative to partner with major corporations, hedge funds, mutual funds, founders, and others in the community of sellers seeking to wind-down, divest, re-balance, or obtain liquidity from their venture capital portfolios.

Since 2001, Millennium has focused on the creation of a new secondary market designed to provide liquidity to holders of venture capital portfolios, Limited Partnership interests, non-core operations, technology-related intellectual property, royalty assets, derivative instruments, and other generally illiquid assets. Millennium's approach often allows transaction partners to alleviate burdensome reporting requirements, optimize tax benefits, reduce administrative obligations, and improve cash flow and earnings. During 2004, Millennium, its partners and its affiliates, entered into transactions with leading operating companies, financial institutions, and other investors, including Scientific-Atlanta, Lantronix, Inc., Alliance Capital Management, and Bowman Capital.

Among the companies Millennium added to its portfolio in 2004 through this strategy were: Agility, Inc., a pioneer of widely tunable components for the telecom industry; Axsun Technologies, Inc., a designer and manufacturer of micro-optoelectronic instruments; Requisite Technology, Inc., a software leader in the growing master data management market; and Ubicom, Inc., a leading developer of wireless network processing chips. During 2004, Millennium also added to its existing position in Aventail Corporation, a leader in SSL VPN technology.

Millennium is currently mining a pipeline of close to $3 billion worth of venture capital investments made by corporate, institutional and individual investors who, because of changes in strategy and the investment climate, now wish to exit from some or all of the investments through the emerging secondary market.

"Corporations use venture capital as a strategic tool to develop new technology and new businesses," observed Dan Burstein, founder of Millennium Technology Ventures. "But just as there are many compelling reasons to make venture capital investments, there are also compelling reasons from time to time to exit from certain investments or to change strategy and focus. We have been developing our abilities to serve as a corporate partner's buyer of choice if and when they decide to sell."

Sam Schwerin, who joined Burstein in 2002 as Managing Partner to take the fund in its current direction, added: "The private equity market has historically lacked a systematic source of liquidity for individual investment positions and non-core assets, especially at the smaller end of the venture capital market. Millennium is positioned to lead this newly emerging market through highly customized transactions structured to meet the strategic, operating, financial, tax and other needs of our transaction partners."

During 2004, Millennium Technology Ventures also made follow-on investments in two of the original venture capital investments in its portfolio, OpenPeak Inc., a leading provider of software solutions that enable consumers to wirelessly network and control consumer electronics and digital media, and WildTangent Inc., an innovative company in the online interactive game business.

About Millennium Technology Ventures: Millennium Technology Ventures, L.P., is a New York City-based venture capital fund that has made a wide range of investments across a variety of technologies and stages of company development, ranging from early-stage ventures to post-public PIPEs. Recently, the fund has been focused on working with corporate partners and other potential sellers to assist in the process of divesting, winding-down, re-balancing, and managing their portfolios of venture capital assets. Millennium Technology Ventures also continues to make more traditional venture capital investments in innovative technology companies. For more information, visit: www.mtvlp.com