EnVerv, a San Jose-based fabless semiconductor company, announced Monday morning it has secured $12 million in its Series B round of funding.

The investment was led by Benchmark Capital as well as, previous investors New Enterprise Associates and Walden International. According to SoCal Tech, EnVerv’s chips are used for communications via low voltage and medium voltage power lines.

“We are very pleased to see Benchmark join our current investors in support of our vision to make EnVerv the leading provider of energy management solutions in the market,” said Shahin Hedayat (News - Alert), chief executive officer of EnVerv. “This investment will enable us to capitalize on our technical achievements to scale customer support and volume productions of our high performance multimode PLC chips.”

EnVerv provides communications means for Advanced Metering Infrastructures as well as other power line-based smart control and monitoring applications.

According to company, it is also responsible for applications in Solar Inverters, Active Lighting, Industrial Control and Remote Monitoring markets where emphasis on mission critical communications and reliable data transmission across power line networks are required. 

“Mission critical connectivity is the cornerstone of building reliable smart grids worldwide and EnVerv’s SoC products provide the best solution for smart grid communications,” said Bruce Dunlevie, general partner at Benchmark Capital, in a statement. “Successful delivery on any array of high performance Power Line Communications (PLC) SoCs in just over a year is a testament to EnVerv’s laser focused execution and innovative product design. At Benchmark, we look forward to working with EnVerv’s management to help continue with this success.”

EnVerv has an established office in China and maintains an office in San Diego where its founder, Reza Mirkhani, is now president and chief operating officer. As reported by SoCal Tech, the executive team behind EnVerve includes a large amount of former RF Magic and Entropic (News - Alert) Communications executives; both companies were based in San Diego.