Debug IP firm draws investors, raises £5m
Other investors in the latest round of funding include semiconductor industry veteran and serial entrepreneur Guillaume d’Eyssautier and existing investors Octopus Ventures and South East Seed Fund.
As part of the funding, Miles Kirby of Oxford, Kirill Mudryy of Enso and Alvise Bonivento of Atlante will join the UltraSoC board, alongside existing investor representative Luke Hakes (Octopus), board Chair Chris Gilbert and non-executive director Chris Wade.
The latest round brings the total invested in UltraSoC to more than £14 million since its formation in 2005. Rupert Baines, CEO of UltraSoC, told eeNews Europe that the money would be used to fund further engineering and sales growth. “We are not planning any further funding. As the business plan stands this will take us through to break-even. But if the uptake in new areas we are moving into accelerates we may reconsider,” Baines said.
UltraSoC Technologies was founded in 2005 as a spin-out from the University of Kent and became a joint spin-out with the University of Essex in 2009 to exploit the research led by Professor Klaus McDonald-Maier and Andrew Hopkins. Baines was brought in as CEO in April 2015.
“Hard tech is back in favor with the UK and global investment community, with recent funding for Ultrahaptics, Graphcore and SiFive – a fellow RISC-V proponent – plus successful exits at Movidius and Mobileye,” he said.
The recognition of the benefits of dedicating silicon area to monitoring IC performance and responsiveness has been gradually growing over the company’s lifetime. It was originally kept to a minimum for essential debug to get a chip and its software functioning correctly but the addition of analytics for in-field performance monitoring is increasingly being used to optimize power-performance trade-offs and deal with security threats and safety breaches.
Next: Customers and partners
UltraSoC has achieved a series of commercial engagements with amongst others: HiSilicon (Huawei), Imagination Technologies, Movidius (now Intel), and Microsemi. UltraSoc has formed partnerships with ARM, Baysand, Cadence/Tensilica, CEVA, Codasip, Lauterbach, MIPS and Teledyne LeCroy.
Related links and articles:
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Movidius licenses UltraSoC monitor IP
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