October 25, 2007
From Austria : Semiconductor 2.0
The title is the post is the trademarked tag-line of Austrian startup, NanoIdent. Unlike a lot of 2.0 startups this reporter has looked at over the past two years, this one feel like it is the beginning of something new.
The four year old Austrian company is specialized in developing and manufacturing printed semiconductors using organic and inorganic materials. It's already generating sales of single digit millions, mainly in customer-financed product development projects – not trials -- and it has visibility on ticking that figure up to a two digit million one next year.
The Linz-based startup has its own fab. It is not an indulgence, it is a necessity, according to Klaus G Schroeter, co-founder and CEO. "Our blue-chip customers won't abandon their old platforms for something new unless they can see that what we offer can be produced in volume," said Schroeter.
The recently completed fab in Austria is able to produce some 40K square meters of wafer chip surface a year (a phrase that is a throwback to silicon semiconductors).
This is what printable semiconductors from this startup look like
NanoIdent is working with companies in the diagnostics, biometrics, and industrial sensor markets in a classic OEM model.
Low cash burn
The company's co-founding duo is a scientific innovator, Franz Padinger, and an experienced entrepreneur, Klaus G. Schroeter. Padinger sold his last startup, QSEL, which developed the solar cell technology to Konarka Technologies, which is a well-funded startup based in the US.
Before teaming up with Padinger, he founded BioID AG, a biometrics company specialized in simultaneous recognition of face, voice and lip movements and employed 80. It was acquired by a publicly traded company.
Your a:c euro reporter first researched the company back in 2005 and since then it has gone from prototype of one type of optical sensor to being able to offer several kinds of sensors, including diagnostic sensors (for DNA-based blood tests, for example), as well as the handheld reader technology to go with them.
A lab on a chip or handheld diagnostics product
It has done this on a remarkably small amount of invested capital, some €12.5M including debt. It is currently raising €10M in equity financing and hopes to attract family offices or high net worth individuals to the round.
Talent Seeks The Edge
Nanoident employs about 65 scientists and specialized researchers from 12 different nations. "Recruiting talent from around the world is not that difficult. Everyone wants to be on the forefront … to be part of the first company to produce sensors and sensor systems in printed semiconductors," said Schroeter.
The Austrian venture recently moved the headquarters of its diagnostic business unit, BioIdent, to California with a Sand Hill Rd address.
A mobile phone concept with a biometric sensor from NanoIdent
View Nanoident
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August 29, 2007
Dutch Investor Marcel Boekhoorn Takes €16.5M Stake in Voice.Trust
Marcel Boekhoorn M&A said today it has acquired a majority stake in venture-backed VOICE.TRUST for €16.5M. We assume it is buying out some of the startup's early investors, but the press announcement didn't make that clear. (We will update if we hear differently.)
The voice biometrics startup has been in business since 2000 and has been selling its technology for integration into password reset systems for authentification.
The Dutch newspaper Telegraf, which actually reported the news last week if the date is correct in the online version we looked at, says that the company had a turnover of €6M last year and that its new backer expects the company to breakeven within the next year or so.
A subsidiary in Dubai, UAE will be established to service the Middle East / Asia Pacific region, which Boekhoorn M&A said it will support, as well as extending its operations to the consumer market for especially mobile payment applications.
Read - Telegraf article on Boekhorn deal (Dutch)
View- Voice.Trust
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June 02, 2006
Spanish VoiceTrust Rival Starts Up
For a university spinoff, Spain's Agnitio has managed to stir up the interest of not only the Spanish, but also Chilean, Columbian, German, and Korean police and justice departments.
Not because it is up to something sinister, but because the two year old spinoff of Spain's Universidad Politécnica de Madrid develops voice identification and voice verification software.
Intelligence agencies and police forces are signing up to trial and in some cases buy its voice verification software, which they use in the same way that they use fingerprints to confirm the identity of a suspect.
And in another market, Spain's BBVA, one of the country's largest banks, is using a product from Agnitio to authenitcate employees that have to reset their passwords.
The password reset business puts it in direct competition with VoiceTrust, which so far has been pionnering that market niche. The German startup recently raised a €2M round of finance from some well-known German business angels.
Agnition has raised seed financing from a Spanish venture fund, Webcapital, which belongs to finance group, Riva Y Garcia in Barcelona.
The public sector is one market they could exploit with this tech. Longer term we could imagine a mass market if oice identification and verification solutions get adopted by the likes of online banks and enterprise network access managers.
It would be less cumbersome and cheaper than issuing chipcards and electronic password generators to end users. With that in mind, we expect that we'll be hearing more about Agnitio.
Read - Webcapital Toma participacion (Yahoo Finanzas)
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March 21, 2006
German voice recognition tech attracts angels
VoiceTrust, a company that develops voice-recognition systems for user identification, has raised €2M to finance the development of a consumer-oriented product and to boost its international sales growth.
It tapped high profile German angel investors, Falk Strascheg, an entrepreneur turned VC (he founded one of Germany's first VC firms, Technologieholding, which was later acquired by 3i) and Boris Anderer, a co-founder of the once high-flying ecommerce software company, Brokat Technologies (he's also a venture partner at Wellington Capital in Munich), along wtih existing investors Avida and Grazia Private Equity.
A comparison of two voice profiles. Each is unique. The software checks 1200 of 200,000 possible data points in a voice print to authenticate a user.
VoiceTrust's technology has a lot of advantages over other biometric systems in that it doesn't need scanners, such as fingerprint scanner or iris scanners, or expensive face recognition software. Rather it uses a standard phone line and some servers running its software.
We've been in touch with VoiceTrust in the past and the firm's founder has had some harrowing experiences trying to develop the market for its technology, so it is good to see that he's found some smart money to grow the business.
A recent Time magazine article said that IBM had made a strategic investment in VoiceTrust, acquiring 5 percent of the company. IBM integrates voice recognition for password resets in its helpdesk applications that it sells to large IT departments.
Founder and CEO, Michael Kramer, decided to create VoiceTrust in 2001 after having his credit card details stolen by hackers.
Kramer's idea at the time was that he would develop software that would make such criminal activity impossible. But that particular application is not how the firm makes money today, rather the software is mainly used as mentioned above, for password resets, to identify and authenticate users phoning in to change their password if they've forgotten it or lost it.
Attempted break-ins, such as using a digital recording, are prevented by a challenge/response process, basically a live test with answers to random questions supplied by the system. Both Volkswagen and Microsoft have adopted VoiceTrust for this application.
With this round, the startup has raised €5M in outside capital, it said in a statment.
Read - VOICE.TRUST durch neues Venture Capital weiterhin auf internationalem Wachstumskurs (press release)
Posted at 01:55 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 29, 2006
Germany's it-werke And Pay By Thumb
San Francisco-based biometrics start-up Pay By Touch has tapped deep-pocketed hedge funds to finance its rollup of smaller rivals and add on the bits of technology it doesn’t have. If it looks to Europe for acquisitions, it won't exactly have a lot of choice. There is only one company on our radar that is making a go of fingerprint-based payments, it-werke, based in Lahr, Germany, located near the Swiss and French borders.
Founded in 2000 it-werke developed its fingerprint scanning technology initially to authenticate online payments, but found that adoption was faster amoung business that wanted to use it for access to buildings and enterprise networks. It recently began to tap the German retail market.
Although the idea of storing your fingerprint anywhere scares some people, we like the concept: no PIN code to remember, no card to worry about losing. Besides, it-werke says its scanning method is not based on the same one used to legally identify a person, it is based on comparing 24 points on the surface of the finger that are unique to an individual.
Either it-werke supplies all employees with the same make and model of vehicle, or this photo was taken in a used car lot.
Read -SAN FRANCISCO, CA Pay By Touch Has Raised More Than $60M in Series C (Biometrics)
