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Ventures West Portfolio Company Acquired by Global Leader in Supercomputing

VANCOUVER, BC, February 26, 2004 -- Ventures West is pleased to announce that portfolio company OctigaBay Systems Corp. has agreed to be acquired by Cray Inc. (NASDAQ NM: CRAY), for approximately US $115 million. OctigaBay, a privately owned Vancouver-based startup, has developed an innovative high performance computing (HPC) system designed to make supercomputing performance accessible to the growing community of scientific and technical computing users.

“OctigaBay has developed ground-breaking technologies to bring unmatched price/performance, reliability and usability to high performance computing,” said John Seminerio, President and CEO of OctigaBay. “This deal accelerates our entry into the world stage, allowing us to work with more customers in more industries in more countries much faster than we could do on our own.”

“The team at OctigaBay has done an incredible job in creating this innovative Canadian company,” explained Sam Znaimer, Senior Vice President of Ventures West and a Director of OctigaBay. “OctigaBay was launched less than two years ago by 10 co-founders led by John Seminerio, Adam Lorant and Paul Terry. They have created remarkable value in a short period of time.”

The OctigaBay management team includes the founders and senior managers from Abatis Systems Corporation and Alcatel Canada. Abatis was acquired in September 2000 for over $1 billion in one of the largest acquisitions of a private technology company in Canadian history.

OctigaBay was conceived while John Seminerio was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Ventures West. Ventures West co-led OctigaBay’s C$24 million seed financing, one of the largest technology seed financings in Canadian history.

"I was introduced to OctigaBay by Ventures West and was immediately struck by the talented and passionate team and the potential of their vision, " adds industry veteran Bill Heil, a Director of OctigaBay and former senior executive of the high performance computing division of Compaq. "This small Canadian start-up delivered a breakthrough computing architecture which will bring significant advantage to global high-performance computing customers."

OctigaBay was an investment in Ventures West 7, Ventures West’s $235 million venture capital fund formed in February 2000, which is now fully committed. In November 2003, Ventures West announced the first closing of Ventures West 8 at $158 million, one of the largest private venture capital funds raised in Canada last year.

For additional details on this transaction, please see www.octigabay.com.

About Ventures West
Ventures West Management Inc. is a private venture capital investment group that is recognized as one of Canada´s pre-eminent investors in early stage technology companies. Since its founding in 1968, Ventures West has formed eight venture capital funds which total over $600 million and has invested in more than 125 companies. Ventures West has the people, the expertise, and the capital to help develop emerging technology companies into market leaders. Investments focus on four technology sectors: Biotechnology, Communications, Energy Technology and Information Technology. For more information, visit www.ventureswest.com.

About OctigaBay Systems Corp.
OctigaBay Systems Corporation is pioneering an innovative new class of High Performance Computing products that delivers the performance of high-end SMP systems at a fraction of the cost. Addressing the most challenging needs of business and research institutions, OctigaBay´s products are ideal for simulation, modeling, searching, sorting, data mining and other processing intensive applications. For more information, please visit www.octigabay.com.

About Cray Inc.
Cray´s mission is to be the premier provider of supercomputing solutions for its customers´ most challenging scientific and engineering problems. Go to www.cray.com for more information about the company.

For more information please contact:
Christine Ramsay
Ventures West Management Inc.
Phone: (416) 861-2280

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