Charlie Muirhead, the 26-year old founder of London listed date prioritisation company, Orchestream, has raised £10.3m in first round funding for Nexagent, his latest telecoms networking venture. It represents one of the largest financings in Europe during the past 12 months for a start-up that is not yet making sales.

Nexagent, a so-called collaborative commerce company which has filed half a dozen patents on its technology, sells to service providers and telecoms carriers, giving them the ability to link data networks across multiple carriers, and provide performance guarantees to their own customers, often multinational companies with international networks.

Company lead investors are Atlas Venture and Benchmark, with Quester and Lago Ventures. iGabriel, the angel network founded by Mr Muirhead which led the £3m seed round for Nexagent in March 2001, also invested.

-Katherine Campbell writing for Financial Times (Monday, 20 May 2002)