Loss-making Kalray raises funds via IPO
Kalray was able to get its IPO away despite the fact that the company made a loss of €4.7 million (about $5.5 million) on operating revenue of €7.4 million (about $8.7 million) in 2017. The company said it aims to reach breakeven by 2020.
Since the company was founded as a spin-off from the Leti research institute in 2008 it has developed a series of massively parallel many-core processors for use in data centers, in networking and in embedded applications such as aerospace, defense and autonomous vehicles.
However, gaining traction has not been easy and the expense of designing IC implementations at the leading-edge gets more expensive with each generation of technology. The company has about 65 employees based in Grenoble, France and in Los Altos, California.
Kalray has announced a third generation of its massively parallel processor architecture (MPPA3) under the codename “Coolidge” to include 80 or 160 64-bit processor cores plus 80 or 160 co-processors optimized to accelerate computer vision and deep learning and VC investment received in 2017 and 2018 was earmarked for the development of that chip.
The company has received more than $65 million in venture capital since its formation from such investors as Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, Safran Corporate Ventures and Asian investment fund Pengpai (see France, Renault rally round Kalray).
Kalray shares were listed on Euronext on June 12, 2018, under the symbol ALKAL and through the admission to trading of 4,336,020 shares including 1,976,649 new shares. The offering price was set at €22 per share towards the top end of a previously declared range of €17.66 and €23.88 per share. Market capitalisation on the day of listing was around €95.4 million (about $112 million).
Next: CEO comment
“We are delighted with investors’ enthusiastic response to our IPO,” said Eric Baissus, CEO of Kalray, in a statement issued by Euronext. “Funds raised will finance our technology roadmap and rollout of new generations of intelligent processors, including our third-generation Coolidge processor starting in 2019, and the large-scale deployment of Kalray products,” he added.
Related links and articles:
News articles:
France, Renault rally round Kalray
Kalray gains Chinese backing in $26 million funding round
Kalray’s Coolidge processor adds deep learning acceleration
Kalray turns to neural networks
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