In today’s challenging venture capital environment, having a leadership team with a proven track record can go a long way towards helping a startup raise funding. The latest testament to this fact comes from Innovium Inc., which today revealed that it has quietly secured $50 million in financing over two rounds.

The first closed at the start of 2015, only a few months after co-founders Mohammed Issa and Puneet Agarwal left their senior positions at Broadcom Ltd. to enter the startup world. The departure was followed by a high-profile lawsuit from their former employer alleging that they unlawfully brought a number of colleagues along in breach of an anti-poaching contract. Worse, the network semiconductor maker also accused the duo of exploiting the insider knowledge they gained during their employment to gain an unlawful competitive advantage.

Such allegations from a major technology supplier would have been enough to sink a less robust venture, but Innovium persevered and ultimately settled the case with Broadcom earlier this year. Issa and Agrawal even managed to convince investors to provide another round of capital while the dispute was ongoing, thus hitting the $50 million mark. The investment was led by private equity heavyweight Greylock Partners and saw the participation of all four backers from the previous cash infusion.

Innovium is using its war chest to develop a “revolutionary” semiconductor designed to power Ethernet networking infrastructure in data centers. The startup hasn’t disclosed any other information about the chip, but it’s likely that it will compete with existing Ethernet products from Broadcom. Another established player that is potentially in the cross hairs is Cavium Inc., where the outfit’s third co-founder and CEO, Rajiv Khemani, served as COO until 2013.

Image via Geralt