Having revised its business plan since receiving a third injection of funding in fall 2005, chip designer eASIC Corp. plans to grow aggressively with a new $48 million fourth round of capital led by late-stage specialist Advanced Equities Inc.

The Santa Clara, Calif., startup, which attracted funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and influential venture investor Vinod Khosla in raising its first institutional round in 2004, more recently moved away from selling chipset building blocks to operating as a more traditional fabless chip vendor.

Along with Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures, existing investors Crescendo Ventures of Palo Alto, Calif., and Evergreen Venture Partners of Israel participated in the latest funding. Chicago's Advanced Equities, the venture capital investment arm of brokerage and asset management firm Advanced Equities Financial Corp., supplied more than half the new money, said eASIC chief executive Ronnie Vasishta. The firm typically invests in mezzanine-stage rounds, aiming to provide growing companies with enough capital to tide them over as they move toward an initial public offering.

Although Vasishta said in late 2005 that a $17.5 million round the company raised at the time would be its last, eASIC's shift in focus and increased need for capital prompted it to seek additional financing. He said the company largely bypassed traditional VCs while raising the current round, instead seeking a deep-pocketed investor that had previously worked with its existing backers.

"Advanced Equities calls upon wide resources for its investments, including high-net-worth individuals, venture firms and hedge funds," Vasishta said. "They transmit their knowledge base to those people quickly."

The executive added that eASIC's new approach is more capital-intensive than selling intellectual property. "At the time of the third round, we were raising money to give us runway on our IP business," he said. "We've reset our expectations, both for our 90-nanometer chip products and our next-generation products."

Vasishta said the company's pre-money valuation had doubled between the third and fourth funding rounds, but would not give further details. He also would not disclose its revenues, while noting that eASIC might reach profitability by late 2009.

Crescendo and Evergreen led eASIC's third round in October 2005. Menlo Park, Calif.-based Kleiner Perkins and Khosla provided $5 million in its first institutional funding, later exercising an option to provide its second round of $7.5 million the following year. EASIC also raised about $3 million in early seed-stage capital.

Although Khosla invested as an individual during the company's early rounds, his stake is now formally held by Khosla Ventures. The firm has two other partners and is independent from Kleiner Perkins, although Khosla remains an affiliated partner at that firm.

EASIC will sell application-specific integrated circuits, which are typically used for a given customer; application-specific standard products, which are more generic and can be sold to many different customers; and field-programmable gate arrays, which contain logic components and can be programmed. Xilinx Inc. and Altera Corp. dominate the field-programmable gate array market.

Vasishta said eASIC expects healthy revenues, but would not rule out a subsequent private funding. But the company is more likely to eventually explore an IPO, he said.

Cooley Godward LLP's James Fulton provided eASIC, which did not use a financial adviser, with legal advice on the deal.