Wisair Secures $20 Million in C Round of Funding27 January 2006
Wisair, the leading provider of Ultra Wideband (UWB) and Wireless USB (WUSB) chipset solutions, today announced the receipt of $20 Million in its C series of funding. The round was led by funds advised by Apax Partners, with participation from existing investors Bynet, Intel Capital, RAD Group's founders, Vertex, new investor Tomen Electronics, and other strategic investors.
"Wisair is at an exciting juncture in its growth as it has already created significant penetration in the market, with more than 80 customers adopting our development systems and reference designs that are based on our industry-proven chipsets. Today, these partners are just beginning to incorporate our offerings into a broad breadth of consumer products," said David Yaish, Wisair president and CEO. "With the new funds, we can continue to focus on expanding our sales channels and move to production shipment of our chipsets."
This announcement comes after successful participation in the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where Wisair demonstrated its Wireless USB Hub reference design and its high performance 480 Mbps operation. Wisair also showcased various Wireless USB implementations with 13 companies including: D-Link, Intellon, Seagate and Toshiba.
"The WiMedia-based UWB and Wireless USB market made significant progress during the past year. We expect 2006 to continue this trend as WiMedia-based offerings are beginning to be incorporated into a number of PC and consumer-based products. In fact, we expect to see a compound annual growth rate of nearly 200% between 2006 and 2009," said Brian O'Rourke, Senior Analyst with InStat. "Wisair, with its latest round of funding, is poised to be among the market leaders and start commercializing its solutions in this hot-growth-market sector."
"Wisair has demonstrated that it is a first-tier player in the UWB and Wireless USB space as it was first to market with WiMedia-based UWB chipsets, UWB development kits, reference designs, and also to receive FCC certification for its UWB technology," noted Meirav Har Noy at Apax Partners. "As the company has shown it has an exceptionally promising future, we are excited to be the lead investor in this funding round, as we were in previous rounds."
"The continued investment by existing venture capital firms reflects Wisair's impressive progress -- both technologically and business-wise -- and demonstrates confidence in the company's future roadmap," said Zohar Zisapel, chairman of Wisair's Board. "The investment will provide Wisair the necessary capital to expand its market activities and continue leading with its UWB chipset and solutions."
About Wisair
Wisair is a leading provider of Ultra Wideband (UWB) and Wireless USB (WUSB) chipset solutions for consumer electronics, PC peripherals, and mobile devices. Leveraging the management teams' decades of wireless communications product development expertise, Wisair is the first company to deliver fully-functional WiMedia-based UWB chipsets and small form-factor reference designs. Today, the fabless semiconductor company continues to focus on delivering low-cost, low-power, and high bit-rate wireless connectivity solutions. For more information, visit the company's web site at http://www.wisair.com.
About Apax Partners
Apax Partners is one of the world's leading private equity investment groups. It operates across the United States, Europe and Israel, and has more than 30 years of investing experience. Funds under the management or advice of Apax Partners total $20 Billion around the world. These Funds provide long-term equity financing to build and strengthen world-class companies.
Apax Partners Funds invest in companies across its global sectors of Tech & Telecom, Retail & Consumer, Media, Healthcare and Financial & Business Services. The Funds pursue a multi-stage equity investment strategy, investing in buyouts, growth capital and late venture. Apax Partners' Funds Tech & Telecom investments include Bezeq, TIM Hellas, Inmarsat, Intelsat, Audible, Dialog Semiconductor, Frontier Silicon, Jamdat, Kabel Deutschland, Power Paper, and Starhome.
About Bynet
Bynet Data Communications is a leading datacom system integrator in Israel and an emerging provider of services worldwide. For more than 25 years Bynet has integrated datacom and telecom systems within varied and sophisticated environments, providing its customers with a unique umbrella of services: consulting, design, marketing, installation, outsourcing, integration, maintenance and training -- all under ISO 9001 certification by the Israeli Standards Institute.
About Intel Capital
Intel Capital, Intel's strategic investment program, focuses on making equity investments and acquisitions to grow the Internet economy in support of Intel's strategic interests. Intel Capital invests in hardware, software and services companies in several market segments, including computing, networking, and wireless communications.
About RAD Group
RAD Group is a family of independent companies that develop, manufacture and market solutions for diverse segments of the networking and telecommunications industry. Each company operates independently, without a holding company, but is guided by RAD Group founders under a collective strategic umbrella.
About Tomen Electronics
TOMEN Electronics Corp. (TSE: 7558), established in 1972, is one of the leading semiconductor distributors and is active in such fields as mobile/wireless communication, information equipment, consumer electronics, automotive, amusement & gaming. For information, see http://www.tomen-ele.co.jp .
About Vertex Venture Capital
Vertex Venture Capital is a leading player in the international venture capital arena, headquartered in Tel Aviv and with representatives in Europe, USA, Singapore and Japan. Vertex invests in Israeli and Israel-related high technology companies in the early stages of development in the areas of information networking, communications and subsystems, components, imaging, enterprise software, and other leading emerging technologies.
Contact:
Serdar Yurdakul
Wisair
408-399-7747
serdar@wisair.com
Eileen Elam
KJ Communications
650-917-1488
eileen@kjcompr.com
Source: prnewswire
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