March 20, 2008
StealthWatch: Barcelona's Project Amuso VC Funded For Cash/Prize Contests
Project Amuso, a pre-launch social media startup based in Barcelona, Spain, says it is has raised funding from "top tier venture capital funds" without saying who those are. When its launched, the company plans to offer cash and prizes for games involving user submitted videos and photos.
Founding team include President Barak Rabinowitz who just graduated from Harvard Business School and before that worked at Yahoo and Sony Broadband. CEO Jordi Bartomeu just graduated from the London Business School. Details to come.
View - site
Posted at 05:39 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 20, 2008
Israel's N-trig Lands Dell Deal; Raises $41M
Tel Aviv-based N-trig has raised $28M from Canaan Partners and Evergreen Venture Partners plus an additional $5M in venture debt from Plenus and investors have provided commitments to future investments that take the investment up to $41M.
Moreover, N-trig says its technology is now being deployed by Dell on its Latitude XT Tablet PC. N-Trig has sold tens of thousands of units to Dell to date, and the revenue from the contract had the company to sales of $2M per month at the end of 2007. The company's CEO says that he expects two deals to close in 2009 that will account for a minimum of $20M each. Moreover, he leaves open the idea that N-Trig will see its DuoSense technology installed in Apple iPhones.
The firm's DuoSense multi-touch technology combines pen and zero-pressure touch for mobile and fixed computers into a single device. Its gee-whiz element is that it enables mobile computers to recognize multiple, simultaneous touch points, so you can use more than one finger at once to manipulate images on a computer screen.
View - site
Read - CEO interview
Posted at 04:46 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 26, 2007
Gamer PCs' Hypersonic Bought By OCZ
OCZ Technology Group plans to acquire Hypersonic PC Systems out of Great Neck, NY. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Sunnyvale-based OCZ designs, develops and manufactures memory and computer components while Hypersonic makes performance gaming PCs.
Read - San Jose Biz Journal
View - Hypersonic site
Posted at 12:16 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 16, 2007
Angels Back Jobsight For Construction Site Box
The idea behind JobSight Solutions is that even if you're a construction worker you still get faxes and email. You're moving around all the time so what are you going to do, head to Kinkos every 15 minutes?
Jobsight plans to launch early next year a box that gives you wireless voice, data and fax, using any telecommunications carrier.
They tell us the box will be about the size of two reams of paper. The startup was founded by Dennis King, who out to know as he was a former superintendent and project manager in the construction industry.
View -site
Posted at 12:51 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 07, 2007
Dell Shops Direct For Zing
Dells says it has bought Zing Systems, but has not yet said how much it paid. Zing Systems had raised $13M led by IDG Ventures Boston with Redpoint Ventures. It sell a portable entertainment players that connects, downloads, manages and exchanges entertainment content directly from the player through WiFi or other wireless protocols, without requiring a PC.
The first from Zing is the Sansaconnect from San Disk which won best of CES last year and will sell for $249. Its a wifi connected MP3 player.
Zing has a famous group of staffers led by Arthur van Hoff who was a Principal Engineer at TiVo, CTO at Marimba and co-inventor of Java at Sun Microsystems he created the JAVA.
Given a reasonable price, this seems like a good deal for Dell. The company has not done many M&A deals and is terrible at consumer gadgets and design. The Zing people have some of that DNA and now Dell has sent a message to the venture economy that you should think of them as potential buyers.
View - Zing site
Posted at 02:30 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 02, 2007
Monitor Maker ViewSonic Files $134M IPO
VewSonic filed to raise up to about $143.8M in an IPO on Nasdaq. JP Morgan Securities and Banc of America Securities are acting as joint book-running managers of the offering.
Headquartered in Walnut, CA, ViewSonic was founded in 1987 and did more than $1B in worldwide annual sales last year. Intel Capital is among its investors.Viewsonic is led by Taiwain born James Chu who is CEO and Chairman.
View - site
Posted at 03:06 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Compellent Technologies Files To Raise $60M IPO
Compellent Technologies filed to raise up to $60M in a Nasdaq IPO. Morgan Stanley, Needham & Co., RBC Capital Markets, Piper Jaffray and Thomas Weisel Partners are underwriting the IPO.
Eden Prairie, MN-based Compellent sells enterprise-class network storage solutions. Compellent sits in the midrange storage area network (SAN) sector. Compellent says it will more than double revenue in 2006. Byte and Switch says that Compellent did $25M in revenue in 2006, up from $10.5M in 2005. Compellent claims a few profitable quarters.
In total, Compellent has raised more than $53M. It is led by Phil Soran, John Guider and Larry Aszmann who previously founded and sold Xiotech it to Seagate for $360M in 2000. The company competes with public companies like Dell and EMC as well as with 3PARdata, EqualLogic, Intransa, LeftHand Networks, and Xiotech.
Posted at 02:58 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Media Storage Startup Fabrik Plans $175M Rev '07
San Mateo-based Fabrik says it expects to do $175M in reenues in 2007 and pans $400-500M in 2008. Most of this growth comes via its SimpleTech subsidiary which it bought last year for $48M. Fabrik makes software to manage storage drives and has installed the software in SimpleTech devices to make them run smarter. Since 2005, Fabrik has raised $35M from Intel, Comventures and others.
View - site
Posted at 01:55 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 18, 2007
Microsoft Invests in Chinese TV Maker
Microsoft has bought a 1% stake in Sichuan Changhong Electric Co., a Chinese major maker of TVs and electrical appliances, fr $12.3M.
The two companies say they will cooperate to develop, make and market TVs, computers and other digital home-entertainment. It's not unusual for Microsoft to get into hardware but why chose the Changhong horse? Microsoft has yet to explain that.
ducts.
Read - Reuters report
Posted at 10:00 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 28, 2007
Trend Watch: Game Startups Landing Seed Funding
Investments in games is picking up thanks to a couple of new trends in monetizing games. The ad supported game model has been proven, in particular for casual gaming. Also, Linden Labs proved the model of giving away games and making money through sales taxes in the virtual economies that they have built.
It does seem, however, that much of the funding comes via angels or happens outside the US. VCs in the US, it seems are still not clamoring to get back into the games business. We missed a few recent game fundings as they were outside the US are were done by angels. Here are some briefs...
RealNetworks is joining with several media execs to fund Torance, CA's OGplanet, which imports Asian online videogames to the US market.
Investors include former Disney Online President and RealNetworks' exec Richard Wolpert; Peter Levin, CEO of digital media firm BellRock Media; Mark Surfas, founder of videogame review site GameSpy; and former RealNetworks exec Andrew Wright. Sangchul Park, formerly an exec with Korea's LG Corp, is heading up OGPlanet, which has already taken over operations for Albatross 18, a PC-based multiplayer online game that's has been big in Asia.
Like Second Life OGPlanet's games are free. It makes a living via revenue through the sale of virtual products, as well as advertising. OGPlanet recently partnered with Wild Tangent to power its game advertising.
View - OGPlanet site
Copenhagen, DenmarkwatAgame raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from angels SEED Capital, and Vaekstfonden. Founded in 2004, WatAgame develops mobile and web games made just for girls.
WatAgame's runs GoSuperModel which has been localized into at least 6 languages. GoSupermodel is ad supported and targets girls aged 10-16.
View - WatAgame and GoSuperModel.
Galway, Ireland's Nephin Games raised $1M from angels. The company develops mobile phone games made to promote films, TV shows, and consumer goods.
A game made by Nephin for the World Kickboxing League
View - site
San Rafael, CA-based Telltale Games, which is best know for its PC adventure game Sam and Max, has raised $1.4M to date The latest funding comes in the form of a Convertible Bridge Note, under the financial guidance of Avance Ventures and included a significant contribution from the Keiretsu Forum.
In addition to Sam & Max. The company is also tapping characters and storylines from the TV show CSI with CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder, which was published by Ubisoft. Telltale also got int casual games market with the launch of its online arcade.
View - site
LiveHive Systems out of Waterloo, Ontario has raised $ 1.8M from Tech Capital Partners. The company operates in gaming but from an interactive TV angle. Its sells its games to TV broadcasters, fantasy sports sites, and web portals for user to play fantasy sports on.
View - site
Quazal out of Montreal develops multiplayer technologies that it sells to video game makers. Quazal's tech includes real-time data propagation and synchronized game inputs and it has what is known as a lobby server which hosts game communities on all gaming platforms. Founded in 1998, Qazal raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Collar Capital; FondAction CSN; La Caisse de Dépôt et de Placement du Québec and Viavar Capital.
View - site
Posted at 01:31 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 23, 2007
Israeli Maker of PCs For Toddlers - Comfy Ware - Funded
Israel's Comfy Ware has raised $1.2M to expand internationally. CEO of msystems, Dov Moran, who recently sold msystems to SanDisk led the investment.
Comfy Ware was founded in 2003, and has developed educational tools including a keyboard suitable for use by toddlers and children aged 1-5. The startup has also produced an interactive learning system for infants. Comfy Ware says it has been profitable almost from its founding and claims to have done a few million dollars in sales last year.
This product is on sale on Amazon for $70 and gets solid user reviews.
View - site
Read - Dov Moran invests in children's computer co Comfy Ware (Globes)
Posted at 12:46 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 03, 2007
Israel's Oree Gets $7M For LED Tech
Israel-based Oree has raised $7M in Series A funding. Founded in 2003, but still in re-sales mode, the company sells optical packaging for the LED market. Genesis Partners led the deal and was joined by GIMV.
Oree is touting flexible, flat optical fiber as a replacement for back-light units in TVs and mobile phones. he technology promises to transmit better quality light, use less power and it can be molded into nearly any shape.
Visit - site
Posted at 11:33 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 02, 2007
Velocity Micro Buys Gamer Gear's Overdrive PC
Velocity Micro, a builder of custom computers and workstations has acquired Overdrive PC, a boutique manufacturer of gaming and multimedia computer systems based near Atlanta. Such gamer systems can run from $7-10K or more. There has been some consolidation in this market starting last year with Alienware acquired by Dell earlier and Voodoo PC became part of HP.
There is no indication of the selling price or Overdrive's revenues.
View - site
Posted at 03:08 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Israel's CoreFlow Funded For Flat Panel Display Assembly Tech
CoreFlow has raised $3.2M in its third financing round. Ofer Hi Techled the round.The company has raised $7M.
CoreFlow was founded in 1999 and develops and manufactures aeromechanical systems for the microelectronics industry. The systems are mainly designed for flat panel displays, solar cells, and semiconductors.
View - site
Posted at 11:59 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 29, 2007
Vudu (aka Marquee, aka Vivond) Has Coming Out Party
Vudu Inc. has commenced a PR road show with good results for its forthcoming Net-connected video player. We have covered the Santa Clara-based Vudu when it was known as Marquee and before that it was known as Vvond. The company has raised $15M in Series B funding led by Benchmark Capital with return backer Greylock Partners. The previously stealth mode company makes software and hardware for secure on-demand access to a large movie library.
Vudu will compete with Apple TV when it launches in the Summer and will cost about the same. Plans are to launch with 5000 movies from seven major studios as well as indie distributors. In fact, every major studio — except, for Sony Pictures Entertainment will make their films available on Vudu. The NY Times found that "film executives largely wax adulatory when speaking about Vudu."
Of course, Vudu plans to offer more films and to someday add TV shows, music and video games.
Vudu connects directly to your TV and does not require a PC or a cable box.delivers video streamed in MPEG-4, which is upscaled to HD. Interestingly, Vudu works in P2P mode, although users will probably not realize it. Boxes that have downloaded a movie will share that movie with other boxes that request it. Vudu claims to have filed 15 patents on this scheme.
The chairman of the Vudu is Alain Rossman who founded Phone.com, EO orporation, and C-Cube Microsystems. The founder of Vudu, Tony Miranz, was with Tahoe Networks and AT&T Bell Labs. The COO (Edward Lichty), and VP of Engineering (Andy Goodman) both come via TiVo.
If you want to make the jump, Vudu will cost you $300 or and the movies will cost $6-10 per. In addition to Apple's movie device, Vudu will compete with movie download services from cable companies, Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, Google, BitTorrent, the Starz movie channel of Liberty Media and Netflix plans such an offer.
In summary, arly reception for Vudu seems to be that that the technology is nice but that many consumers are tired of connecting more boxes to their TVs and there is so much competitive noise here it may be hard for people to make decisions.
Read - Exclusive Pics of the Vudu - Video Store In A Box (Gizmodo)
Read - Vudu Casts Its Spell on Hollywood (NY Times)
Posted at 10:42 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 27, 2007
Acer Planning M&A
Acer has been eating Dell's lunch, taking away market share at a surprising rate. Now the company's CEO says they are planing to buy some companies. He did say that they will not be huge deals, so we are guessing these might buy some private companies. IDC earlier this week reported that Acer was up by almost 50% in both notebooks and desktops.
BTW - Acer says the PC company it plans to buy is not Gateway.
Read - Infoworld story
Posted at 01:18 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 26, 2007
TechForward Funded For Consumer Electronics Buybacks
We like what LA-based TechForward is up to. They give consumers a hedge to planned obsolescence of laptops, iPods and other consumer electronics. Its a variation on BestBuy's extended warranty, except that with TechForward you pay more upfront knowing that you are going to return a product that is not broken but is no longer cool.
As an example, a customer might pay $75, after merchant markup, for the right to sell his laptop back to TechForward for $655 after 6 months, $502 after 12 months, $383 after 18 months, or $291 after 24 months:
To market the product, TechForward has an API that merchants can grab. To date, it has not announced that any merchants are actually using the service.
Today, First Round Capital invested an undisclosed amount in the company.
View - site
Posted at 11:34 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 29, 2007
SuperMicro Computer's IPO Not So Super. More Like Micro.
Super Micro Computer raised $64M in its IPO that was priced well below a forecast range.
The offering of 8M shares sold for $8 per share, compared with its $9.50 - 11.50 forecast range, set by its underwriter led by Merrill Lynch. The shares trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol SMCI.
The San Jose-based company founded in 1993 has a market cap of $325.2M on revenues of $328M and net income of $18M.
Posted at 10:42 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 21, 2007
Electronics for Imaging Makes Strategic Investment In Israel's Kornit
Printer maker Kornit Digital has raised $3.5M from EFI (Nasdaq: EFII). Kornit makes digital inkjet printers for textiles. The company sells inkjet printing of images on T-shirts and other clothes at speeds of up to 200 articles of clothing an hour.
This machine prints...
On fabrics like this.
View - site
Posted at 12:38 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 07, 2007
Spokane's SprayCool Restructures With $10M To Keep Hardware Cool
SprayCool has raised $10M from Fluke Venture Partners, Northwest Venture Associates and The Sand Hill Sakura Fund.
The Spokane, WA-based company uses a liquid spray technique to cool high performance electronics equipment. It has made a number of lists of high growth startups, however, with the funding it announced a 20% workforce cut which must signal that growth is slower than expected.
The company sells to data centers but also to the military.
Read - SprayCool gains funding, cuts 45 jobs (Local Press report)
Posted at 12:50 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 06, 2007
Paul Allen's Mini-PC Flipstart Set To Launch
Vulcan Ventures' funded mini-PC FlipStart will finally become available within a couple of weeks. It runs Windows and competes with the likes of UMPC, OQO, Sony VGN, and Tiqit in this market.
Aluminum encased MiniPC runs on a 1GHz processor with Windows XP. The system has a 30GB disc drive and 256MB of internal RAM. The display screen is HDTV quality at 1024x600, and can capture stills at 1.3 megapixel with an integrated camera. The MiniPC will also has a USB 2.0 port. It will cost about $2K.
Read - Paul Allen's next small thing -- FlipStart (Seattle PI)
Posted at 01:46 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
February 27, 2007
Super Micro Computer Sets IPO Terms On Lousy Market Day
Super Micro Computer said it plans to sell 8M shares for between $9.50 and $11.50 per share. Super Micro sells server systems and high-end motherboards. It claims 2006 revenues of $328M and net income of $18M.
Read - Super Micro Computer sets IPO at 8 milllion shares
Posted at 08:00 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 31, 2007
ZING Mobile Raises $13M For Wireless Consumer Gadget Tech
ZING Systems has raised $13M led by IDG Ventures Boston, joined by Redpoint Ventures. ZING sell a portable entertainment players that connects, downloads, manages and exchanges entertainment content directly from the player through WiFi or other wireless protocols, without requiring a PC.
We have passed on buying a sling box because we didn't like that it was reliant on the PC. The first devices based on the ZING Mobile Entertainment Engine include the Stiletto family of wearable satellite radio players from Sirius Satellite Radio.
A first from ZING is the Sansaconnect from San Disk which won best of CES this year and will sell for $249. Its a wifi connected MP3 player.
BTW - Zing has a famous in the valley group of staffers including Arthur van Hoff who was a Principal Engineer at TiVo, CTO at Marimba and co-inventor of Java at Sun Microsystems he created the JAVA.
Posted at 11:29 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
November 22, 2006
SiCortex = Supercomputer Porno
This would set you back $1.5M or higher with more memory, but its worth it.
SiCortex is a crowd pleaser with 5,832 processor cores within a chassis with lighted cabinet doors that rise like wings.
Early in October, SiCortex closed its second round of funding, a $24M round from Chevron Technology Ventures, bringing its total raised to $48M since 2003. Voltaire has raised five rounds of funding, totaling $68M , since its inception in 2001.
View - site
Posted at 01:38 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
Intematix Funded For Haitz's Law
Haitz's Law is the LED equivalent of Moore's Law, which has accurately predicted a doubling of LED brightness every 18 to 24 months.
Intematix is one of the start-ups pushing Haitz's Law and it has raised $16.5M in its series C. Crosslink Capital and Samsung Ventures led the investment in the Fremont company. Presidio STX, a unit of Sumitomo, also gave money as a new investor. Draper Fisher Jurvetson, East Gate Capital and Pacifica Fund - investors from earlier rounds were in as well.
Intematix's CEO says they are doing a 300% increase in our phosphor revenues alone from last year to this. Intematix is pushing the envelope thanks to Intematix' materials discovery engine. They claim this secret sauce, rapid prototyping engine synthesizes very large numbers of material combinations.
View site.
Posted at 12:59 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
November 16, 2006
Canada's Liquid Computing Blows Up With $27M In New Funding
Big shakes up in Ottawa as Liquid Computing, a developer of scalable high-performance computing solutions, has raised US$27.7M in Series B funding. Newbury Ventures led the deal, and was joined by return backers Vengrowth, ATA Ventures, Business Development Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada, and Axis Investment Fund. The funding comes after the recent launch of Liquid Computing’s Interconnect Driven Server, LiquidIQ.
LiquidIQ merges computing, networking and broadband into a highly integrated, optimized and controlled system. In initial tests, LiquidIQ delivers a five times or greater improvement in sustained performance scalability over commercially available servers and switches being embedded into offerings today. The company says it has benefited from the chaos of converged offerings like storage devices from EMC, Blackberries from RIM and Voice Over IP from Cisco which cause demand for interconnect servers.
View - site
Posted at 03:22 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 17, 2006
Ncomputing Raises $8M For Multi-user Terminal
NComputing out of Orange, CA has raised $8M in Series A funding from BA Venture Partners thanks to an impressive showing at the recent Demo event, an pedigreed founder and a sweet product.
Stephen Dukker, former CEO of eMachines is the founder of NComputing. His simple concept is that the standard multi desktop setting is cost wasteful. Ncomputing's answer is to combine an $11 chip and two PCI cards to a standard white-box PC, enabling it to serve up the Windows desktop and other applications, including video, to seven monitors. So for the price of a $490 server, the company delivers seven computing desktops.
So far, 80% of NComputing's sales have been in developing countries and to schools in rural parts of the United States, Dukker says.
The idea is similar to what made Citrix Systems great, serving the Windows client from a central machine. But nMachines thinks it can do for small environments what Citrix did for the enterprise.
View - Ncomputing site
Posted at 03:35 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 14, 2006
Khosla-backed Agami Systems Gets $11M For Network Storage Device
Palo Alto-based Hercules (NASDAQ:HTGC) is backing Sunnyvale-based Agami, with $11M. Agami sells network attached storage. Vinod Khosla is on the board as a rep of Kleiner Perkins, although he now fronts his own firm.
Agami's High End Product Will Do 1,000 Megabytes Per Second
Posted at 03:36 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
IPG Photonics Files $130M IPO
IPG Photonics, an Oxford, MA.-based maker of fiber lasers and amplifiers has filed to raise $130M IPO. It plans to trade as Nasdaq/ IPGP, with Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers as underwriters. The company's VC investors are TA Associates, Merrill Lynch, Apax Partners, Winston Partners, Robertson Stephens and Marconi Ventures.
IPG Sells Its Tech For a Variety of Apps, From Laser Welding.Cutting To Telecom & Medical
Based in the US, IPG has strong Russian roots. It's Chairman and CEO is Valentic Gapontsev. He founded IPG in 1991. He is a Russian emigre who holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. The firm's managing director is also a Russian.
Posted at 03:20 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 19, 2006
The Stealth Start-up That Kleiner and Sequoia Are Into
Redwood City-based Peakstream (formerly Shakti Computer Systems) has raised $5M in Series A funding from Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins. For now, the company will only tell you that it is developing software platforms for next-generation computing.
However, we checked the resume of one of the founders. Mathew Papakipos was Director of Architecture at Nvidia until 2003. He claims on his resume that he is good at math -- we tend to believe it. He was recently spotted at a conference speaking on the subject: Pseudorandom Number Generation on the GPU.
View - Jobs at Peakstream
Posted at 06:49 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 22, 2006
Alienware Rocks; Bought By Dell
Alienware's Founders Alex Aguila and Nelson Gonzalez.
The rumors have been flying and it is just now official. Dell's CEO recently announced that the company will start taking more chances and this may be the start of it. The Alienware buy is only the third or fourth in the company's history. Dell's purchase of Alienware should give the staid Dell brand some cool juice.
Terms of the sale were not announced. As we recently posted, Alienware is on track to hit $225M in sales this year and is a high margin business, so the selling price was certainly steep. We suspect Alienware divulged these numbers just as they were talking with Dell to motivate the deal.
Read - Dell to buy high-end PC maker Alienware (USA Today)
Posted at 07:13 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
Demark's Asetek Raises $6M For CPU Cooling
Denmark's Asetek, which makes vapor phase, vapor chamber and liquid-cooling solutions to cool CPUs, has closed a round of VC funding totalling $6M with additional capital from KT Venture Group.
Asetek's products are used by overclockers and hardcore PC users who want to get better performance by keeping temperatures down. A high end product sells for about € 951.
Posted at 05:43 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 14, 2006
Ultra-light PC Co. OQO Reboots
OQO was founded by some passionate Mac developers who have pioneered a small form factor computer that runs on Windows XP. The company raised $20M in November, but clearly its VCs wanted some suit-wearing supervision and so they have installed Jay Shiveley, who was managing director of VantagePoint Venture Partners.
Shively's plan is to go after verticals with the product, maybe healthcare, sales, and manufacturing. The decision comes on the heals of the launch of Microsoft and its launch partner, Samsung, roll out of the Origami ultramobile PC which is targeting the mass market.
View - Profile (the a:c)
Posted at 09:58 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 13, 2006
Alienware's Revs Up To $225M
With the long, hard downfall of SGI, it's terrific to see companies that push the limits of hardware design like Apple and Alienware are thriving. Still privately held, Florida-based Alienware indicates that its 2005 revenues were $225M, up from $172M in 2005. Alienware sells high-powered PCs built for hard-core gamers. Their PCs can cost upwards of $7K.
Read - Alienware racks up gamers, and millions (AP)
Posted at 01:24 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
January 17, 2006
A Private Tech Co. Busts An $8.2B Move
Out of China, Huawei reported that it blew out its 2005 numbers with $8.2 billion in revenues, up on a year-on-year increase of nearly 47% over 2004's $5.58B. Investment bankers lick their chops contemplating this IPO.
Read - Huawei Beats 2005 Sales Target (Light Reading)
Posted at 10:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
November 16, 2005
OQO - Profile
OQO = Apple Newton + Microsoft
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Founded: 2000
Management: CEO and co-founder is Jory Bell who was one of the primary product designers of the G3 Powerbook line and 'co-conceived 'the Titanium Powerbook. Before that he was at IBM's Almaden Research Center, developing new portable computing hardware for IBM's ThinkPad. Bell also worked at MIT on climate change research. His co-founder and CTO is his old friend Jonathan Betts-LaCroix who founded Analog Design, an electrical engineering design-and-build firm. Everyone else at the company has expensive education pedigrees from Stanford, MIT Harvard or a combo and design time with Apple.
Investors: $20M in Series D financing. The oversubscribed round was led by Washington D.C.-based Paladin Capital Group with existing institutional investors Azure Capital Partners and AsiaTech Management, as well as new key strategic investor Motorola Ventures, the venture capital arm of Motorola
Business Model: The company has developed a product that has been dubbed the Ultra Personal Computer. It weighs 14 ounces and measures 4.6 inches by 3.4 inches by 0.9 inches. It uses a 1GHz Transmeta processor, comes with a 20 GB hard drive, has 256MB of RAM and runs on Windows XP. It has a 800x480 display, a thumb keyboard and a thumbwheel. It has built-in 802.11b WiFi and Bluetooth wireless capabilities, FireWire and USB 1.1 ports. It sells for under $2K.
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Competitors: Tiqit. VictoryMul. Dell, Gateway, and HP might be competitors but have yet to step-in. Not sure if that is a good sign.
Dirt: $1K Palms and co. are probably the biggest competitors even though they are a different beast. Hard-core geeks will see the difference, but can OQO be sexy enough to get attention, get users' love, then be able to drop prices to get more users? It's too early to even buy the product on Amazon so stay tuned.
Posted at 08:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
November 10, 2005
Siimpel - Profile
HQ: Arcadia, CA
Founded: April 2000
Management: Dr. Eric Fossum is the CEO of Siimpel. He was the CEO of Photobit Technology, which he co-founded in 1995 with associates from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to commercialize CMOS image sensor technology for camera-phones, web cams, auto applications and high-speed motion-capture cameras. Photobit was acquired by memory-chip manufacturer Micron Technology in 2001. While working in R&D at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he was the inventor of the low-power, high quality CMOS active pixel image sensor camera-on-a-chip technology that has enabled camera-phones and swallowable camera-pills. The two co-founders of the companies also appear to be ridiculously smart and accomplished Jet Propulsions Lab & Cal-tech alums.
Investors: In November 2005, the company raised $20.13M of a $23.4M Series C funding round. BA Venture Partners joined return backers like Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Global Catalyst Partners, Portage Venture Partners and Zone Venture Partners.
Business Model: Siimpel is selling technology to consumer electronics, mobile communications and digital imaging companies to manufacture smaller, more-powerful digital cameras. The company combines expertise in optical microsystems, micro-electro-mechanical systems, optics, electro-optical design, image sensors, packaging and camera electronics.
Competitors: Photobit, Omnivision Technologies. We also expect much of Siimpel's competition will come from the R&D labs of large Asian camera manufacturers. such as Samsung and Mitsubishi.
Dirt: Dr. Fossum was a pioneer here before and won so we wouldn't be surprised to see him emerge with the next generation of optical standards for consumer products. From what we understand, the company went into production in August but has remained quite about it.
Posted at 08:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
June 17, 2005
Azul Systems - Profile
HQ: Mountain View, CA
Founded: 2001
Management: Company has a stellar pedigree. President & CEO is Stephen DeWitt who was VP and GM of content delivery and edge computing for Sun Microsystems. Prior to that he was CEO of Cobalt Networks which went public before being acquired for $2B by Sun in 2000. Co-founder Scott Sellers was a co-founder of 3dfx Interactive, a graphics processor company.
Investors: Azul has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Accel Parnters, ComVentures, Austin Ventures, Worldview Technology Parnters, Redpoint Ventures.
Business Model: The company has developed network-attached processing appliances that it claims bring efficiencies to running virtual machines like Java. Users install Azul's proxy software on servers running middleware products such as BEA Systems's WebLogic or IBM's WebSphere. The proxy software then transfers Java processing jobs away from the server that is running WebLogic or WebSphere and over to the Azul appliance. Azul has custom-designed its own microprocessor - a chip with 24 processor cores that is designed to consume less power than conventional chips. Azul sells its appliances to large companies on the promise that they will see 5x to 100x efficiency gains. The appliances sell for $80K on the low end to $900K.
Competitors: No direct competitors at this point, but it competes peripherally with symmetric multiprocessing like VMWare as well as standard servers like those of Sun.
Dirt: The conventional wisdom is that Azul breathes fire, however their price points are steep. Companies will take a deep breath and make sure that Azul Systems work as promised.
Posted at 05:52 PM | Comments (3) | Permalink
January 24, 2005
Mirra - Profile
HQ: Sunnyvale, CA
Founded: 2002
Management: CEO is Tim Bucher, one of the original engineering team executives of WebTV and former VP of Consumer Products at Microsoft.
Investors:In March 2004, Mirra received $8M in Series B funding in a round led by Sequoia Capital. Mirra's Series A funding was from Venture Strategy Partners, Sunrise Capital, and angel investors.
Business Model: Mirra sells a range of sizes of PC backup servers that automatically back-up important files. Chief selling point is that users can access files from anywhere on the Web.
Nobody Wants It.
Competitors: Pug Servers, Maxtor, Western Digital, Iogear, SmartDisk.
Dirt: We suspect that the oxygen has been sucked out of the room at Mirra HQ. They haven't raised that much money and their products aren't selling. Maybe they have channels that are doing better than Amazon, but Mirra's best selling product ranks as only the 13K best selling electronics product on Amazon. That sucks. The problem, as we see it, is that the vast majority of consumers won't differentiate between Mirra products and traditional external hard-drives, except when it comes to cost. External hard-drives now sell for roughly a buck per gig. Mirra costs way, way more - $3 to $4 per gig.
Posted at 12:13 PM | Permalink
December 27, 2004
Motion Computing - Profile
HQ: Austin, TX
Founded: May 2002
Management: There's a reason HQ is in Austin - the entire management team has been born and raised at Dell. CEO Scott Eckert was Founder and GM of Dell Online as well as GM of international divisions for Dell in the UK, Ireland, and Brazil.
Investors: Company Raised $25M in December 2004 led by Institutional Venture Partners with New Enterprise Associates, SVB Capital and G-51 Capital. Previously the company closed $6.5M in Series A funding in 2002 and $11.2M in Series B funding in 2003.
Business Model: Company sells tablet PCs, particularly into vertical markets like healthcare. Selling points are low price, and what has been called the best screen available. Gateway private labels Motion Computing's product.
The M1400 - In All Its Glory
Competitors: HP Compaq, Viewsonic, Acer, Fujitsu.
Dirt: Oh boy, tough market and it defies logic that a company can thrive by just building tablets - no PCs, no servers. But Motion seems to be working. There is very little venture activity in hardware - knuckle-bumps to these guys for even trying.
