Newnham Technology Raises $13.25 Million Series B as Esprit Capital Partners Join Atlas Venture and Benchmark Capital.

PALO ALTO, Calif. & CAMBRIDGE, UK -- Investment will help Newnham expand operations and target new applications for innovative NIVO(TM) display networking technology

Newnham today announced it has raised $13.25 million in a Series B extension round of venture capital to help the company expand the development and worldwide marketing of its interactive networked display software and semiconductor technology. Following this round, the company has now raised $21.75 million of capital.

Esprit Capital Partners led the round. Also participating were existing investors Atlas Venture and Benchmark Capital and several private investors.

The round, just a year after the previous financing round, is a strong endorsement of the company's management and its NIVO(TM) (Network In Video Out) display-networking technology. In April, Newnham launched USB NIVO a low-cost, interactive and easy-to-use software/semiconductor solution for transporting high-resolution graphics from a PC to a display or multiple displays over USB 2.0. The company's first customer is Kensington Technology Group, which uses USB NIVO as the key component in its Notebook Expansion Dock with Video that was introduced in June.

New Board Members

The company also announced that Alan Duncan, Partner at Esprit Capital Partners, and David Mooring, former president of Rambus Inc. and a Newnham investor, have joined the company's board as directors. Duncan has 15 years of experience in the venture capital industry. He joined Prelude Ventures, a predecessor to Esprit, in 1996 and is responsible for a portfolio of electronics and computer related investments including Alphamosaic, Phyworks, Lime Microsystems and Xanadu Wireless. Mooring is a veteran semiconductor industry leader who brings extensive experience to the board that includes serving as president of Rambus from 1999 to 2004. Prior to joining Rambus in 1991, he was Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Vitesse Semiconductor (1989 to 1991), and held various sales and marketing management positions at Intel.

Commenting on the announcement, Duncan said, "Newnham's NIVO(TM) technology provides an extremely easy and cost effective way of connecting wired or wireless networked displays and thus enabling the rapid growth of exciting applications such as wireless picture frames, projectors, and USB docking stations."

Hamid Farzaneh, Newnham President and CEO, said, "With the increasing availability of low-cost digital displays, the emphasis is moving from how we process data to how we view it. Advances in network display connectivity will overtake processors as the main driving force for growth in the computing industry over the next 10 years. Newnham's NIVO(TM) technology is exceptionally well suited to become the de facto standard for wired and wireless networked displays. The funds from this round will help us further expand our operations and the expansion of our technology into other high-volume applications. I'm pleased with the confidence shown by our investors and I welcome Alan and David to the Newnham board. They bring tremendous experience and knowledge and I look forward to working closely with them."

About Newnham

Newnham is a network graphics semiconductor technology company founded in 2003 to enable more flexible connections to be made between computers and displays. Newnham's technology solutions allow any number of monitors to be connected to a single PC and, if required, function independently to display different content. Newnham's institutional backers include Atlas Venture, Benchmark and Esprit. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with main R&D and product development activities in Cambridge, UK. For more information, visit www.newnhamtechnology.com.

About Atlas Venture

Atlas Venture is a leading early-stage international venture capital firm that invests in technology and life sciences businesses in the U.S. and Europe. Since its inception in 1980, its Partners have helped build over 300 companies in more than 15 different countries. In the past decade, 25 portfolio companies have been acquired and 37 are now public companies with an aggregate market capitalization of over $12 billion. Atlas Venture is currently investing from its seventh fund and manages over $2 billion in capital through offices in Boston, London, Munich, and Paris. For more information, visit www.atlasventure.com.

About Benchmark Capital

Benchmark Capital was founded in 1995 to help talented entrepreneurs build great technology companies. Benchmark's partners take a team-oriented, labor-intensive approach to venture investing to deliver a superior level of service to the firm's portfolio companies. Benchmark's portfolio includes franchise companies such as eBay and Shopping.com (Nasdaq:EBAY), Equinix (Nasdaq:EQIX), Handspring (Nasdaq:PALM), JAMDAT (Nasdaq:JMDT), Juniper Networks (Nasdaq:JNPR), Red Hat (Nasdaq:RHAT), and ZipRealty (Nasdaq:ZIPR). Managing more than $3 billion in committed venture capital, Benchmark focuses on investing in entrepreneurs with original ideas. For more information on Benchmark, visit its website at www.benchmark.com.

About Esprit Capital Partners

Esprit Capital Partners ("Esprit") is the new independent venture capital fund manager created by the merger in June 2006 of the Prelude Ventures and Cazenove Private Equity teams. The combined team has invested in many of Europe's most successful venture exits of recent years, including the sales of KVS to Veritas, Alphamosaic to Broadcom, FillFactory to Cypress Semiconductor and DNA Research Innovations to Invitrogen. Esprit has US$500 million of assets under management (including Prelude Trust plc and the Esprit Capital I fund) and has offices in London and Cambridge, UK. For further information, please visit www.prelude-ventures.com or www.espritcp.com.