Amphion Announces US$5 Million Fundraising.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers BELFAST, Northern Ireland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 18, 2003 Amphion, the leading provider of semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) for digital video and image coding system-on-chip design, has announced the closing of a US$5M funding round. ACT Venture Capital led the round, which included investment from existing investors Apax Partners' Funds and Enterprise Equity, and new investment from Invest Northern Ireland Northern Ireland: see Ireland, Northern. Northern Ireland Part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland occupying the northeastern portion of the island of Ireland. Area: 5,461 sq mi (14,144 sq km). Population (2001): 1,685,267. . Amphion was advised by corporate finance house Ion Equity. "We are delighted to have investors of this calibre help us build the company," said Dr. JG Doherty, CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Amphion. "These funds will enable us to expand sales and support of the innovative solutions that are giving Amphion substantial traction among the industry's influential leaders. Moving forward, our focus is on delivering the high value solutions from our strategic roadmap that customers have identified as essential to their own future success." Walter Hobbs, the ACT Director who led the investment, said, "Amphion has world class IP with a proven record of fitting seamlessly into major chip design projects. Its impressive blue-chip customer traction in the current difficult climate is testimony to the quality of the IP and the Amphion SIP business model." John McMonigall, Apax Director, commented, "We remain committed to our investment in Amphion, which has continued to demonstrate the technology leadership necessary to be successful. We are delighted to have ACT joining the investor syndicate." Prof. Fabian Monds Professor Fabian Monds (born November 1, 1940) is a BBC Governor with responsibility for Northern Ireland. Appointed in 1999, in June 2003 his term of office was extended to the end of July 2007. , Invest NI Chairman, said, "Amphion, one of Northern Ireland's most important advanced technology-led businesses, is an excellent example of how our Business Support Principles can be applied in conjunction with funding from venture capitalists. This has provided a business solution that will enable the company to continue its investment in innovative products that are being demanded increasingly by the global electronics industry." Ulric Kenny, Director at Ion Equity commented, "This is a significant fundraising in very challenging markets for SIP. It is a testament to Amphion's management team, clear market focus and highly differentiated product set. Amphion is now well positioned to scale its business towards platform SIP sales to tier 1 semiconductor and OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) The rebranding of equipment and selling it. The term initially referred to the company that made the products (the "original" manufacturer), but eventually became widely used to refer to the organization that buys the products and customers around the world." The SIP market has developed in recent years as OEMs and semiconductor companies increasingly buy-in reusable SIP from specialist third party vendors. Fuelling this trend is the difficulty in finding and maintaining the in-house expertise necessary to accommodate the broad scope of functionality found in today's complex chips, as well as time-to-market pressure from competition. Next-generation consumer electronics devices such as digital video set-top boxes, mobile phones and cameras require a leap in compute efficiency above that delivered by traditional programmable digital signal processors (DSPs) alone. It has recently been acknowledged in the industry that the only way to achieve the required performance is by utilizing application-specific hardware accelerator cores, in which Amphion is the world leader, to overcome the limitations of programmable DSPs and embedded or reconfigurable processors. Dan Maher of ACT Venture Capital has joined the board of Amphion, which also includes John McMonigall of Apax Partners, and industry leaders Pete Magowan, formerly an executive Director at ARM Holdings Plc, and Greg Reyes, also a non-executive director A non-executive director (NED, also NXD) or outside director is a member of the board of directors of a company who does not form part of the executive management team. He or she is not an employee of the company or affiliated with it in any other way. at LSI LSI: see integrated circuit. (Large Scale Integration) Between 3,000 and 100,000 transistors on a chip. See SSI, MSI, VLSI and ULSI. Logic and ARC International This article is about the publicly traded processor company. For the privately held French housewares company of the same name, see ARC International (household). . Further Information: JG Doherty Chief Executive Officer Tel: +44 (0)28 9050 4000 Email: jg.doherty@amphion.com Dan Hauck President, Amphion Semiconductor Inc. Tel. +1 408 451 0162 Email: dhauck@amphion.com Editor's notes About Amphion Amphion was spun-out of The Queen's University Queen's University, at Kingston, Ont., Canada; nondenominational; coeducational; founded 1841 as Queen's College. It achieved university status in 1912. It has faculties of arts and sciences, education, law, medicine, and applied science, as well as schools of of Belfast and started trading in 1994 on the back of 14 years of university research into advanced DSP (1) (Digital Signal Processor) A special-purpose CPU used for digital signal processing applications (see definition #2 below). It provides ultra-fast instruction sequences, such as shift and add, and multiply and add, which are commonly used in math-intensive architectures. The founders of the business were Dr. J Noun 1. Dr. J - United States basketball forward (born in 1950) Erving, Julius Erving, Julius Winfield Erving .G. Doherty (CEO) and Prof. John McCanny (CTO (Chief Technical Officer) The executive responsible for the technical direction of an organization. See CIO and salary survey. ), an international authority in the design of special purpose architectures and silicon chips for DSP. Since inception, Amphion has become a world-recognized supplier of the highest performance, lowest power SIP cores in the industry. Amphion currently employs 38 and is headquartered in Belfast, with sales and marketing headquartered in San Jose San Jose, city, United States San Jose (sănəzā`, săn hōzā`), city (1990 pop. 782,248), seat of Santa Clara co., W central Calif.; founded 1777, inc. 1850. , CA. About ACT Venture Capital ACT Venture Capital is the largest and most active venture capital investor in Ireland. In January, 2003 ACT announced that it had raised EUR EUR In currencies, this is the abbreviation for the Euro. Notes: The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. 170 million for its third venture capital fund, representing the largest technology focused venture capital fund raised in Europe in 2002. Investors included a number of leading Irish investment institutions as well as JP Morgan Fleming and Merrill Lynch Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MER TYO: 8675 ), through its subsidiaries and affiliates, provides capital markets services, investment banking and advisory services, wealth management, asset management, insurance, banking and related products and services on a global basis. from the U.S., Partners Group from Switzerland, Access Capital Partners from France, Extorel and VCM VCM Vinyl Chloride Monomer VCM Variable Cylinder Management (Honda) VCM Virtual Channel Memory VCM Value Chain Management VCM Voice-Coil Motor VCM Vehicle Control Module VCM Vignette Content Management from Germany, and the European Investment Fund The European Investment Fund, established in 1994, is a European Union agency for the provision of finance to SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) headquartered in Brussels. It does not lend money to SMEs directly; rather it provides finance through private banks. from Luxembourg. ACT's total funds under management now amount to EUR 350 million. ACT's strategy is to invest primarily in Irish indigenous companies with strong innovative technologies aimed at international markets and at various stages of development. It has a portfolio of over 30 such companies, including Cape Clear Cape Clear may refer to:
For additional information, visit the web site at www.actventure.com About Apax Partners Apax Partners is one of the world's leading private equity investment groups, operating across Europe, Israel, the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. and Japan. With over 30 years of direct investing experience, Apax Partners' Funds provide long-term equity financing Equity Financing The act of raising money for company activities by selling common or preferred stock to individual or institutional investors. In return for the money paid, shareholders receive ownership interests in the corporation. to entrepreneurs to build and strengthen world-class companies. It pursues a balanced equity portfolio strategy, investing in companies at all stages of development from early stage to buy-out in transactions ranging from EUR 5 million to EUR 5 billion. Apax Partners' Funds invest in companies across its 6 chosen global sectors of telecommunications, information technology, healthcare, media, financial services, retail and consumer. Some of Apax Partners' Funds recent technology investments include BlueArc, Damovo, Kelyan, RedM, Solid Information Technology, Sonim Technologies, Systemonic and Wisair. Apax Partners manages and advises over EUR 12 billion on behalf of leading institutional investors around the world. For additional information, visit the web site at www.apax.com For further information, please contact: Apax Partners Siobhan Loftus, Director of Marketing Tel: +44 (0) 20 7872 6495 Email: Siobhan.Loftus@apax.com Clare Sillars, Press Officer Tel: +44 (0) 20 7872 6476 Email: Clare.Sillars@apax.com About Enterprise Equity (NI) Limited Enterprise Equity (NI) Limited is Northern Ireland's longest established venture capital company with over EUR 30 million invested. Part of the Enterprise Equity Venture Capital Group, it was established in 1987 by the International Fund for Ireland The International Fund for Ireland is an independent international organisation established in 1986 by the British and Irish governments with the objectives of promoting "economic and social advance and to encourage contact, dialogue and reconciliation between nationalists and as an evergreen venture capital company. Group offices are located in Belfast, Dundalk and Galway. To date, the Group has invested EUR 48 million in 66 Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland companies covering a broad spectrum of sectors including IT, manufacturing, electronics, branded apparel, and biotechnology. For further information, please visit the website at www.eeni.com About Invest Northern Ireland Invest Northern Ireland (Invest NI) is Northern Ireland's economic development agency. Its mission is to accelerate economic development in Northern Ireland, applying expertise and resources to encourage innovation and achieve business success, increasing opportunity for all within a renewed culture of enterprise. Through the promotion of innovation and entrepreneurship and a strategy based on partnership with industry, academia and the wider community, Invest NI is working to continue Northern Ireland's transformation into a knowledge-led economy driven by increasingly successful, export-led companies. About ION Equity Ion Equity is a dynamic corporate finance firm and venture capital investor. Drawing together an exceptionally experienced team from international investment banks, Ion provides world-class advice to the Irish technology and growth sector. Ion specializes in providing full advice throughout the transaction process, from planning through to completion. Ion also offers value-added investment to early-stage technology businesses. Further information from: www.ionequity.com |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion