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July 30, 2007
Wolfson Acquires VC-backed Sonaptic For Upto $40M
Scottish micro-electronics powerhouse Wolfson (probably best known as a supplier of Apple's iPod components) has acquired five year old Sonaptic, a VC backed venture chip startup that is specialized in audio chips for consumer electronics products for up to $40M (if earn outs are achieved after an initial payment of about $25M).
According to a statement we received from Sandy McKinnon, a partner at Pentech, the startup's early stage backer, Sonaptic was doing about $4M a year in sales and employed 31 people in Scotland.
Pentech invested in 2003, so this is a pretty quick turnaround for the Scottish early stage tech fund. The inside scoop is that it was a choice of raising a new VC round or taking an offer from acquisitive strategic investors, according to some insight in a TechConfidential report (see link below).
This is the second audio tech startup Wolfson has acquired in recent months. It also bought a pre-VC acoustic MEMs startup a few months ago called Oligon, which was also Scottish and co-founded by Richard Laming and Mark Hesketh. Price paid was about $5.7M we hear.
Laming was a Kymata cofounder, an extremely well funded optoelectronics startup that attracted big name VCs during the last venture cycle, which was eventually sold to Alcatel for in excess of $110M.
Read - sonapitc pays off for investors (techconfidential-thedeal.com )
Posted on July 30, 2007 01:02 PM | Posted to News And Updates | Semiconductors | Permalink
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