RedMere Technology raises US$13.5M

24 Apr 2007 | News

First-round funding

RedMere Technology Ltd of Balbriggan, Ireland, a multimedia networking fabless semiconductor company, announced the closing of an additional US$5 million top up to its first round of venture capital funding, bringing the amount invested in under 6 months, to US$13.5 million.

The top up round was led by Edgestone Capital Partners, a Canadian private equity firm, along with additional reinvestment by the original investors including Celtic House Venture Partners. RedMere will use the funding to expand its portfolio of multimedia communications chipsets and to expand marketing activities in Asia.

RedMere designs and markets chipsets that are used in the HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) devices market, from flat screen televisions to surround-sound systems. The advanced communications microchip technology manages the faster flow of complex video and audio data to improve performance and reliability.

The company has produced a range of patented chipsets, which it unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2007. Redmere will be launching its expanded portfolio of HDMI products later this year.

Peter Smyth, CEO, said, “Following our first round of fundraising and customer reaction to our products, there has been a lot of interest in our technology.”

“This additional funding demonstrates the confidence in the company by our investors and will allow us to focus on exploiting new market and applications opportunities.”

There are forecast to be 200 million HDMI units in the marketplace by 2008. Many of these are visible in LCD and Plasma TVs, but applications also include media centres, media PCs, set-top-boxes, projection systems, home theatre systems, DVD Recorders and personal video recorders.  

RedMere recently opened an office in Taipei, Taiwan, and moved its headquarters to new offices in Balbriggan, Co Dublin. Its design office in Cork will be expanding into new premises in this year. All the design and production management of its chipset is handled by an R&D team of engineers in Dublin and Cork, with physical production outsourced to Taiwan.

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