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Semiconductors - Friday, August 19, 2005

VeriSilicon - Profile

HQ: SHANGHAI, China

Founded: 2001

Management: CEO is Wayne Dai, who was the Co-Chairman and CTO of Celestry Technologies, which was acquired by Cadence Design Systems in 2002. Prior to that, he was the founder, Chairman, and CEO of Ultima Interconnect Technology. He has a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering, from UC Berkeley and was a professor at UC Santa Cruz.

Investors: In August 2005, Verisilicon closed Series B with US$13.5M. New investors included Intel Capital, HSBC Private Equity (Asia), CID Group, Legend Capital, KTB/UCI, International Finance Corporation (IFC). Existing investors were WI Harper Group, IDG Technology Venture Investment, iGlobe Partners, and Harbinger Ventures.

Business Model: Verisilicon is an ASIC design foundry; aka - a low-cost chip engineer body shop. Services range from a design and verification platform, IP, front-end and back-end design services, software design service and turn-key services for China based foundries. VeriSilicon had 140 engineers prior to its latest round of funding.

Competitors: Faraday Technology, Paradigm Works, ViASIC.

Dirt: Even as Intel has added more and more functionality to its chips, the demand for specialized chips continues unabated. VeriSilicon has proven that it can do good work in China - and for much less than shops in the US. Just as we have seen software outsourcing shops develop into tens of thousands of employees and billions in billing, expect to see the same in China.