Foundries.io looks to $1bn IPO
Foundries.io is aiming for a public share offering (IPO) worth $1bn in the next three years, says chairman Ian Drew.
“My aim is to create a European technology company with an IPO for a billion dollars in three years,” he said.
It has raised $11.5m in seed and Series A funding rounds from UK and European investors. This is a deliberate strategy, says Drew.
The Cambridge-based company provides an embedded Linux distribution with a security and update framework for devices that connect to the Internet of Things. For example its Foundries Factory software is used in an electric scooter in Germany (shown at the Embedded World show this week, above) to run both the IVI in-vehicle infotainment system and the motor controller.
The company has also signed a deal with French power giant Schneider Electric for the software to be used in its Wyser range of smart home hubs, running on a range of different ARM processors. The software allows apps to run securely in Docker software containers, creating an ‘app store’ approach for embedded systems. This is increasingly important for AI applications, says George Grey, CEO of Foundries.io.
The company sells its software as a service, with a license costing $50,000 per year per product line, with no per-unit royalties, although there are deals available for startups, says Grey. This is supported for the length of the product, which could be over a decade.
“We are a product company, not a services company,” said Drew. All the funding has come from European backers rather than US funds, which is a deliberate decision, says Drew, who was a long term senior executive at ARM.
The company works closely with ARM and its chip partners, adopting the ARM SystemReady technology. It has developed the first Linux distribution to fully integrate and provide commercial support for Project Cassini, an open, collaborative, standards-based initiative from ARM.
This will accelerate the adoption and deployment of Cassini platforms by providing safe and secure updates as the Cassini specifications for cloud-native designs expand and evolve.
The FoundriesFactory Linux microPlatform enables ARM SystemReady-IR and -ES security certification, PSA Certified Level 1 and the Parsec security services. Several major equipment makers are already implementing the Project Cassini requirements using FoundriesFactory, including AAEON, ADLINK, Advantech, ASUS and Nexcom.
“Project Cassini and FoundriesFactory enables the same kind of application portability in embedded development that mobile phone users have come to expect.” said Grey. “This collaboration between our FoundriesFactory Edge Platform-as-a-Service and ARM really marks a major milestone in the way we build, test and deploy IoT and Edge devices, and signals to the market where embedded development is headed.”
Related articles
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- Customized IoT operating systems based on Linux and Zephyr
Other news from Embedded World
- World’s first M0+ USB-C PD 3.1 controller
- European RISC-V chip for IoT development kit
- Imagination launches its first real-time embedded RISC-V CPU
- Renesas, TI square up over Bluetooth LE
- World’s first 1.5TB industrial microSD card
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