Cradle Secures Additional $10 Million in Funding; Pioneering Developer of Multi-Processing Semiconductor Platform Has Raised More Than $40 Million To Date.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 8, 2001

Cradle Technologies, Inc., the creator of the Universal Microsystem (UMS), today announced that it has completed a first close of $10 million toward its Series D round of financing. The financing, led by current investors Charter Ventures and Smart Technology Ventures, will enable Cradle to complete initial production and sampling of its products. This brings the total invested in Cradle to more than $40 million to date.

"Semiconductor product design and development is becoming increasingly difficult for systems vendors. They must find solutions that help them deliver edge products to market quickly while facing significant pricing pressures," commented Bob Kondamoori, partner at Charter Ventures. "We believe traditional technologies will not keep pace with market demands and we continue to invest in Cradle because the UMS architecture is the most practical and cost effective alternative solution we have seen. The UMS is capable of causing a paradigm shift in the semiconductor industry as a viable alternative to constant spins of high performance ASICs -- a chipless model."

Formed in 1998 by a group of luminaries from innovative semiconductor companies such as Cirrus Logic and Xilinx, Cradle's UMS is a new multi-processing platform that enables Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to significantly reduce their development costs for a broad range of complex communications and convergence products such as small business routers, VPN gateways, integrated voice and data routers, networked multifunction peripherals and next-generation networked set top boxes. The development of complex applications in software rather than hardware yields tremendous economies in product design.

"The fact that there has been a vast amount of code already developed outside the company indicates that Cradle has successfully addressed the software programming methodology issues associated with multi-processing systems in the past. Our investment in Cradle was based on their ability to maintain a compelling value proposition while shifting system design to a software approach," added David Nazarian, managing partner at Smart Technology Ventures.

Currently, the OEMs are required to use costly combinations of microprocessors, DSPs, applications specific standard products and custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to complete their designs. The UMS architecture yields an immediate order of magnitude increase in price-performance with software compatibility and scalability capable of supporting entire OEM product lines. The consolidation of all real-time processing onto a family of UMS devices allows OEMs to produce many products using an all-programmable system design approach. The reduction in the cost of developing and maintaining a product line and the associated time to market gains creates an industry-shifting paradigm for OEMs that can for the first time profitably operate in fragmenting markets especially where competition is increasing. Cradle believes that the UMS will join the microcontroller, microprocessor, and digital signal processor as a fourth fundamental processor family for the semiconductor industry.

Cradle management estimate that Cradle's products address a more than $9 billion dollar market opportunity that they expect will to grow to more than $25 billion by 2005. The broad market reach of the UMS solution allows Cradle to potentially serve many segments of the semiconductor market.

"We are extremely pleased with the support we have received from potential customers as well as from the investment community. This round of financing will allow us to complete the process of sampling chips and prepare to deliver them to our beta customers," said Satish Gupta, CEO and co-founder of Cradle.

About Charter Ventures

Charter Ventures is a leading early-stage venture capital firm that has helped entrepreneurs turn great ideas into great companies for more than 20 years. Based in Palo Alto, CA, Charter invests in the areas of software, communications and life sciences. Recent investments include Cbyon, Ellie Mae, Integrated Biosystems, Maple Optical Networks, Metabolex, Terago and Xalted Networks. More information on Charter Ventures can be found at www.CharterVentures.com.

About Smart Technology Ventures

Smart Technology Ventures is a leading early stage venture capital fund based in Los Angeles, CA. Smart Technology Ventures will also consider later-stage opportunities if they fit within the overall scope of the fund. The fund focuses its investments primarily in telecommunications markets such as wireless, photonics, broadband, and software. Representative companies in Smart Technology Venture's portfolio include Transilica (short-range wireless semiconductors), Optinetrics (integrated optical components), Talk2 (voice enablement s/w platform for wireless carriers), and Inari (powerline networking technology). For more information, please see our website at www.SmartTechnologyVentures.com.

About Cradle

Cradle Technologies, Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company, founded in 1998, which has invented a revolutionary, new single-chip, off-the-shelf, microprocessor platform for stream processing applications called the "universal microsystem" (UMS). Cradle is a privately-held company backed by leading technology companies, venture capital firms and individuals based in Fremont, CA.

Editors Note: For further information about Cradle Technologies, contact Roeder-Johnson Corp. 650/802-1850; [e-mail]

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