MaiaEdge, a startup developing federated private networking infrastructure, has raised $20 million.

G20 Ventures, the Burlington-based venture capital firm that was part of the consortium that revived Napster, was among those that joined MaiaEdge’s Series A. Executive management and unnamed individual investors were also among those backing the firm.

“The internet connected applications and users, but it left networks negotiating by spreadsheet,” MaiaEdge CEO and co-Founder Abilash Menon noted. “That model breaks down in an AI world where inference, data, and policy move across providers in real time. MaiaEdge gives operators a way to federate their networks with intent, speed, and sovereignty.”

MaiaEdge was founded in 2024 by Menon and Tim Ziemer, both of whom are former Juniper Networks staff. Menon served as director of software engineering at the now Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)-owned firm, while Ziemer was Juniper’s VP of sales.

The pair departed to launch a startup looking to address what Menon described as the “big middle” between data centers and enterprises.

“It is a dense, fragmented layer of regional operators, fiber owners, and private networks. It is where real connectivity happens,” the CEO wrote in a blog post. “It is also where coordination quietly falls apart.”

Touting federated solutions, with a nod toward increased industry demand for sovereignty-proof infrastructure, MaiaEdge combines its Path Border Controller (PBC) hardware with its cloud-based Path Computation Engine (PCE) orchestration to automate private path provisioning.

The startup’s PBC rack-mounted unit features dual 100 Gb/s ports that’s also transport agnostic, meaning merged layer-two and layer-three capabilities let customers combine fiber and dedicated internet access (DIA) connectivity through a single unified fabric. Users are able to add a port extender option to add 48 additional tenant ports.

“The AI era requires a fundamentally different approach to private networking,” Ziemer wrote in a LinkedIn post. “Distributed inference and multicloud workloads need connectivity that spans multiple providers – but today's interconnection models were built for a different time. Manual provisioning. Bilateral negotiations. Months to activate services that should take minutes.

“We built MaiaEdge to solve this – purpose-built infrastructure that automates private path provisioning and establishes virtual network-to-network interconnections in minutes, not months," Ziemer added.

The Series A funding will support the rollout of purpose-built carrier infrastructure that enables network operators to automate provisioning, federate with partners, and monetize private connectivity.

The startup plans to use its newly raised funds to support the rollout of its offerings, including the rollout of purpose-built carrier infrastructure that enables network operators to automate provisioning, federate with partners, and monetize private connectivity.

Mexican fixed broadband and mobile provider IENTC Telecom counts among its early customers.

“MaiaEdge enables us to scale at a pace that wasn't possible before,” IENTC Telecom CEO Carlos Arguimbau noted in a statement. “We're deploying PBCs globally and telling partners: if you want to peer with us, deploy a PBC. It's that simple.”