MONTREAL -- Hyperchip Inc., a growing Montreal startup company that's developing a super-fast router for directing Internet traffic, said Friday it has received $70 million in additional financing.

The biggest chunk of the money is a $50-million loan from Investissement-Quebec, a provincial agency set up in 1998 to stimulate the Quebec economy by fostering private investment and job creation.

Hyperchip, which has grown from 40 people to 250 in the past two years, said it is preparing to commercialize a router that can handle Internet traffic at 1,000 times the speed of the current generation of products.

Such routers could be used on existing networks by telecommunication and Internet carriers, the company said.

"Our new funding gives us the financial support required to bring our innovative solution to market,'' Brian Barry, Hyperchip's chief executive officer, said in a release.

"Carriers around the world are telling us that they are experiencing significant growth of their Internet traffic and that they are looking for a new breed of high-performance core router that can cost-effectively grow with their networks.''

However, since late 2000 and throughout last year, it has been difficult to raise investment capital for Internet carriers and their suppliers, such as Nortel Networks and its U.S. rival Cisco Systems, the current leader in the router market.

Hyperchip, which has offices in Montreal and in Dulles, Va., has been more successful than most in attracting venture capital. The fourth round of financing announced Friday brings the total to about $220 million.

In addition to the government loan announced Friday, a group of venture capital companies led by Technocap are putting a further $20 million into Hyperchip.