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D2S closes series B financing with $9 Million
By siliconindia
Bangalore: D2S, an emerging design and software company, has closed its series B financing, raising over $9 million. This up-round was led by Benchmark Capital and DAG Ventures, with all prior series A investors, including Advantest Corporation and Cadence Design Systems. The series B financing will be used to further enhance and expand the market development for D2S� design-for-e-beam (DFEB) technology, allowing semiconductor manufacturers to eliminate the barrier of rising mask costs and speed time to market.
In conjunction with this new round of funding, Nick Pianim, Managing Director of DAG Ventures, will join the D2S board of directors. Pianim augments D2S' outside board members, which include Alex Balkanski, General Partner of Benchmark Capital; and Lance Glasser, industry consultant and former chief technology officer at KLA-Tencor.
"We are privileged to have the funding and support of these premiere venture capital firms, as well as the continued strategic investment and collaboration with world leaders in the EDA and semiconductor equipment industry," said Aki Fujimura, Chairman and CEO of D2S.
As the industry moves to smaller geometries, mask costs become an even bigger challenge for IC manufacturers, making low-volume production of custom ICs economically infeasible. DFEB technology tackles this dilemma head on and enables leading-edge semiconductor systems-on-chips (SoCs) to be manufactured without the upfront mask cost. With mask budgets above $3 million at 40-nm, even derivative designs that have relatively low design costs cannot be produced without a large upfront volume commitment. This latest round of funding will allow D2S to change this equation.
"This difficult environment represents an opportunity to develop breakthrough technologies for the next generation of semiconductor technology nodes," stated Balkanski.
Pianim said, "D2S signifies a special and rare opportunity as they provide a unique and innovative technology that gives manufacturers the low-risk, low-cost path they need to produce high-value devices in lower volumes."