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May 01, 2006
High Volumes Attract Investors to Ireland's Firecomms
Firecomms, a spinoff from the Tyndall Institute in Ireland, has raised €9.6M in a deal that brings in two new investors, Irish VC, ACT Venture Capital, and laser manufacturer, ALPS. Its early investor, Atlantic Bridge, also came back for this round.
Firecomms makes two kinds of optical components, both targeted at high-volume markets (consumer electroncis and automotive data comms), which it sells to OEMs. These include light emitting diodes and laser chips, known as a VCSELs.
The firm says that its LEDs are much faster than those on the market today, so they can be used for data communications and can replace copper cables in home and car networks, where glass fiber is too expensive to terminate, and copper is heavy and sensitive to electromagnetic interference. Unlike the alternatives, this architecture (based on plastic fiber optics) has a lower installed cost, is not sensitive to electromagnetic interference, is easy to terminate, and is lightweight.
Its VCSELs are targeted at home networks for transporting TV signals up to 50m from a set-top box to a flat screen, as well as for transporting data the short distance from portable PC and mobilephone chips to the LCD screen. Its solution is more robust, lower cost, and able to handle the high speeds now being demanded in these two market segments.
There have been plenty of investments in European VCSEL and LED startups but many struggled and failed to live up to their early potential because they didn't, or could not, (due to the limitations of there photonic components) target high-volume markets (to be fair many were targetting the telecomms sector which completely evaporated when the bubble burst) This one has clearly avoided these traps. With its new strategic investor and a nice amount of capital, we think that Firecomms has promise.
Read -Firecomms Announces a Funding Round of euro 9.6 Million (press release)
Posted on May 1, 2006 06:59 AM | Posted to Semiconductors | Venture Capital | Permalink
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