alarm:clock

Semiconductors - Thursday, June 14, 2007

Meltdown In Beaverton: Flat Panel Chip Maker Enuclia Runs Out of Cash

Enuclia Semiconductor, which was funded to make chips for flat-panel televisions, is out of business. The company had raised $18M in VC funding, including a 2006 Series B round at a $33M post-money valuation from Menlo Ventures, Sevin Rosen Funds and Scale Venture Partners.

Enuclia had agreed on terms for a $14M Series C deal with existing shareholders, but that the deal went south when one investor got cold feet.

Enuclia had to lay off the last of its 53 employees - it has recently laid off another 50+ on top of this. The Oregonian says the news marks another milestone in the steady decline of Oregon's cluster of electronic display companies.

What went wrong at Enuclia? At least one analyst says that the market is just too complex for a startup to bit off. "I'm sorry that Enuclia closed down, but I'm not surprised," said Shyam Nagrani, principal analyst covering the digital TV market for the research firm iSuppli in Santa Clara, Calif.

High-end TV technology has become increasingly complex, Nagrani said. Companies designing chips for that market have to coordinate hardware and software, then adapt their products to work with all of the different TV formats used in Europe, Asia and North America. For many small companies like Enuclia, he said, it's too much to handle.

"Today you can't just build a display processor," Nagrani said. "You have to build an entire TV system."

View - site