Third-round funding
The cellular wireless semiconductor company, Icera, based in Bristol, UK, announced that venture capital firm 3i plc has invested $20 million as an extension to its recent third funding round, which now totals $60 million.
3i joins Benchmark Capital Europe, Atlas Venture, Accel Partners and Amadeus Capital Partners. Icera has now attracted over $100 million in venture funding since it was founded in 2002.
The new funding will enable Icera to expand marketing activities for its Livanto wireless soft modem for mobile phones and datacards. Together with Icera’s Adaptive Wireless software, Livanto enables users to download large email files with attachments, access web pages and download music tracks onto media players over the air in seconds.
The technology supports 2.5G standards, GSM, GPRS and EDGE currently, and will be developed for additional air interfaces, including HSUPA, WiMAX and Mobile Digital Video.
Stan Boland, President and CEO of Icera, said, “We’re very pleased that 3i has made this substantial investment in Icera and excited they recognise that the baseband modem is the technology pivotal to mobile phones.”
He added, “3i has an excellent track record as an investor in early stage companies and in helping them to become huge successes. With their expertise in private equity, as well as in venture capital, we also have more capability to consider developing our business plans inorganically and to leverage our technology into creating a large, successful wireless chipset and software company.”
Early versions of Livanto have been sampling since September 2005, in parallel with achieving interoperability and network testing.
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