InSilica gets $18 M funding

By ST Team   |   Friday, 07 July 2006, 19:30 IST
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BANGALORE: InSilica has received a funding of $18 million in new financing which will enable the company to accelerate its growth in a broader range of target customers and geographies. Participants in the round included Intel Capital, Flextronics, Crossbow Ventures, Dow Ventures, and NewPath Ventures. Insilica, a supplier of high value – high volume ASIC and standard system-on-chip solutions, was founded on an Indo-U.S. model where executive and engineering leadership is driven in Silicon Valley. Kumar Shiralagi, Director, Intel Capital India, commented: “In today’s dynamic, fast-paced competitive market, a clear need exists for low power, high-performance customized ‘system on chip’ solutions. InSilica’s products provide customers with cost-effective, flexible, high volume solutions to satisfy these exact requirements.” After initial financing the company spent most of 2004 developing and proving a proprietary design flow and intellectual property base which would enable solutions that are lower power, higher performance, faster time to market, and more competitively priced than typical standard ASIC suppliers are capable of delivering. In 2005 InSilica focused on a select set of target customers who would find critical value in these differentiators. As a result the company has now achieved strategic customer wins in key segments such as mobile phones, high performance networking, high definition video processing, broadband wireless communications and has ramped to high volume production in early 2006. This customer base includes both traditional systems OEMs as well as other fabless semiconductor suppliers who chose InSilica for their execution and delivery as a more effective approach over vertical integration. “InSilica has proven its ability to win and deliver on designs that are pushing the specification limits of what the multitude of typical standard ASIC companies can provide, and we are doing this more cost effectively and with faster time to market” said Balaji Baktha, President and CEO of InSilica Corp. “This major financial commitment by key industry players is both a validation of the significant value we provide to our customers, and to our confidence we can scale to have a much broader impact on the industry.” InSilica expects to utilize the financing to build out its IP portfolio further, as well as adding scale to Sales & Marketing, Operations, and Engineering that will enable the company to execute on more worldwide customers simultaneously. The company still intends to maintain a strategic focus on customers who will gain key competitive advantages through InSilica resulting in recurring longer term business relationships than typical in the customized SOC and ASIC segments.