Money In

Qimonda gets a reprieve

2008-12-22T15:30:25Z

Continuing the lifeline theme today (see the previous post about Palm), beleaguered chipmaker Qimonda AG has dodged a bullet with the announcement Sunday that the German state of Saxony, a Portuguese institution and 77.5% shareholder Infineon AG [IFX] offered a combined €350 million ($487 million) in emergency funding.

The agreement had boosted the shares of both Qimonda and Infineon by early afternoon Monday, with the Dresden, Germany-based chipmaker up 76% at €0.42, giving the group a market value of €143.6 million. Shares in its Munich parent were up 7.6% at €0.72, putting a €539.8 million price on the whole company.

Malte Schaumann, an analyst at SES Research GmbH in Hamburg, Germany, wrote that the package removes the short-term threat of insolvency for Qimonda, and will allow it to increase production of its latest "buried worldine" chipmaking technology, giving Qimonda a competitive advantage and potentially attracting bid interest.

At the same time, he wrote, the deal will clear the decks of any bids reliant on buying the company out of bankruptcy and relieve Infineon of any possible litigation or regulatory demands for repayment of subsidies.

The agreement involves a €100 million loan from an unnamed Portuguese bank, €75 million from Infineon and €125 million from the government of Saxony. It follows a Dec. 1 warning from Qimonda that it would face severe liquidity shortfalls in the first quarter of 2009 if discussions with possible investors failed to translate into a deal.

Qimonda said Sunday the agreement would also allow it to draw on a €280 million guarantee from the Federal Republic of Germany and the state of Saxony, and that it was close to securing €150 million of this amount. -- Jonathan Braude

See Dec. 1 post on Qimonda from Tech Confidential

Unmanned aerial vehicle startup flies into $4.4 million

2008-12-09T11:00:00Z

Proxy Aviation Systems Inc., a startup designing a new generation of the unmanned aerial vehicles that have been growing in popularity for Air Force missions over hostile territory, is expected announce Tuesday that it has been awarded $4.4 million in federal funding to advance its work.

The Germantown, Md.-based company, which is backed by venture firm L Capital Partners, boasts a software system that allows one ground station to manage up to 12 unmanned vehicles at one time, and for one pilot to control multiple aircraft. The company claims that technology gives it a huge advantage over other UAVs, including some manufactured by defense heavyweights such as Northrop Grumman Corp., that require one pilot to direct each craft.

Proxy Aviation since 2005 has raised at least $15 million, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The company was formed in 2003.

The government cash will be used to finance Phase 2 of Proxy's flight demonstrations, which are expected to take place in mid-2009. Proxy's craft flew Phase I of the demonstration in July 2007 at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. - Lou Whiteman

Skydeck lands $3M for mobile call tracking

2008-09-29T14:34:39Z

Skydeck, an online service that lets consumers track their cell phone calls and text messages, has raised $3 million in a series A round from Saban Ventures, the VC arm of private investment firm Saban Capital Group Inc.

The deal brings total investment in the one-year old Silicon Valley startup to $4 million. It previously had raised a $1 million angel round.

The investment is the first for Craig Cooper since he joined Saban Ventures. Cooper was hired by Hollywood financier Haim Saban to start the unit earlier this year and invest in the wireless, new media and broadband Internet sectors. Cooper cofounded a few mobile phone startups and was subsequently was a VC at SoftBank and VantagePoint Venture Partners, where he invested in several companies including mobile entertainment startup Thumbplay Inc. and voicemail technology provider YouMail Inc., according to a Skydeck blog post from CEO Jason Devitt.

Cooper, along with I-Hatch Ventures founder and general partner Chip Austin, have both joined Skydeck's board.

Skydeck's online service combines users' call records with their address books to, as the company puts it, remind you "who called you last week, who you need to call next and who never calls you back." -- Olaf de Senerpont Domis

See Sept. 29 press release on Series A from Skydeck
See Sept. 29 post from Skydeck blog

Interactions rings up $12M for call-center automation

2008-09-18T17:29:10Z

Call center technology startup Interactions Inc. Thursday announced a $12 million Series C round led by Cross Atlantic Capital Partners.

Previous investors Sigma Partners, Updata Partners, North Hill Ventures also participated in the round. As part of the deal, Interactions said Cross Atlantic managing director Richard Fox will join its board. The startup has raised $35 million to date, and said it plans to use the latest funding to boost sales and support for its hosted service, which handles inbound and outbound customer service calls.

Other call-center services and software providers that have been funded recently include Voxify Inc., which in February received $15 million from Intel Capital, Eldorado Ventures, Palomare Ventures and Sigma Partners, and HyperQuality Inc., which last year raised a $10 million Series B round from Ignition Partners, Miramar Venture Partners, Rustic Canyon Partners (an investor in The Deal LLC) and Divergent Ventures LLC. -- Olaf de Senerpont Domis

See Sept. 18 press release on Interactions' Series C from PR Web
See January 2007 story on HyperQuality's Series B from TheDeal.com

Punchbowl quaffs $2.1M Series A

2008-09-16T14:30:56Z

Event planning software startup Punchbowl Software Inc. said Tuesday it has received $2.1 million in a round led by Contour Venture Partners. Previous investors Intel Capital and eCoast Angels participated in the funding.

The company, founded in 2007, offers online party planning and invitations built on the open source Web framework Ruby on Rails. The funding will be used to grow Punchbowl's development team, the company said. Traffic to the company's site has grown by a monthly 20% over the past year, it added.

The company raised a seed round of less than $1 million from Intel Capital and eCoast Angels last October. -- Olaf de Senerpont Domis

See Sept. 16 press release on Punchbowl's funding via Yahoo! Finance

For more, see VentureBeat

Chip survivor Xelerated says telecom carriers ready to start spending

2008-08-14T16:41:28Z

Since the telecommunications equipment market melted down in 2001, much of the industry abandoned internal chip development and relied largely on software improvements to build faster, cheaper switching and routing products. But a handful of companies including Xelerated AB, stuck with proprietary silicon development, and by taking a series of relatively small capital rounds along the way, the Swedish company now think it's in position to reap the rewards as carriers begin to accelerate their capital investment in networking gear.

Xelerated has raised $13 million from lead investor Sixth Swedish National Pension Fund, along with other previous investors Accel Partners, Alta Partners, Amadeus Capital Partners and Atlas Ventures, in a round the company expects will finally take it over the top to positive cash flow. The eight-year-old company has design wins with multiple switch and router makers, notably Fujitsu and Huawei, and has been shipping products for about five years. But given the long design, proving and certification cycles in the industry, Xelerated CEO Thomas Axelsson says this year is the first that has generated large, though undisclosed, revenues.

Xelerated will use the new funding to develop new products for the metro, access and large enterprise network markets, and to expand sales and marketing of chips already in production. Axelsson says the round was positioned to provide enough capital to fulfill its business plan, but notes that investors are prepared to advance more if the need arises.

The executive joined the company in August 2007 in conjunction with a $23 million round closed in May with Sixth Swedish and Amadeus as new investors. "I saw the need for bandwidth growing in Sweden and internationally and the expectation that high-capacity networks will need to be built seemed reasonable," Axelsson says. "At that stage the company had two products but nothing had reached volume, but the market is finally increasing."

If carriers do renew heavy investment in their networks, they'll likely bypass the more commoditized products equipment manufacturers have been churning out the last five years to look for differentiated products with custom silicon. If so, Amadeus and Accel will be particularly gratified, as they not only have stakes in Xelerated, but also recently backed a $17 million late-stage round for fellow chip survivor Solarflare Communications Inc. -- Clifford Carlsen

See Aug. 14 press release on latest funding from Xelerated AB
See June 17 post on Solarflare from Tech Confidential

Israeli chipmaker banks $17.5M to boost volume for mobile TV products

2008-08-13T17:06:45Z

Israel's Siano Mobile Silicon has been positioning itself for four years to help lead the onslaught of broadcast television on mobile devices, and with its $17.5 million third round, investors have endorsed what the company believes is a leadership position.

Israeli venture capital firm DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures led the round, joined by previous investors Jerusalem Venture Partners, Star Ventures, Walden Israel, Bessemer Venture Partners and Inventec Appliances, bringing total venture investment in the fabless semiconductor manufacturer to $52 million. After specifically prospecting for a U.S. lead investor in its $23 million second round of March 2006 and landing Bessemer, the company threw the new round open to all comers and wound up with another local firm well-familiar with its rapid progress.

Siano was formed in October 2004 by chip industry veterans to target the emerging mobile television market, and had products available in late 2006 as deployments began heating up in Asia and Europe. The company's products are aimed at meeting the extremely small -form factor and low-power requirements for handheld devices, but also are built to accommodate all five of the leading technology formats used in different markets.

Siano co-founder and CEO Alan Ironi said that in addition to meeting size and power usage benchmarks, the company's products offer superior performance capabilities that help overcome the challenges facing all-or-nothing digital broadcast reception on the go. He said the company won a good increase in valuation based on its design wins, and the the new money will support volume production with its Taiwanese contractors.

Ironi said the company has yet to introduce a chip accommodating the sixth standard for use in North America, but expects to do so when mobile TV is closer to becoming a reality in that market. The company is clearly focused on being a player in the U.S., which is expected to develop into an enormous market. In addition to having Bessemer as an investor, Siano is registered as a Delaware corporation, and the company could have U.S. markets in sight for an IPO after hitting its goal of profitability within two years. - Clifford Carlsen

See Aug. 13 press release from Siano Mobile Silicon

ThermaSource lands $41.5M geothermal energy endorsement

2008-08-12T17:39:07Z

Louis Capuano, CEO of geothermal energy services company ThermaSource LLC, has been hanging around Northern California's Geysers region since 1974, waiting for the inevitable day that the long-identified, sporadically tapped energy source would become a major earner and shining light for what geothermal energy can do throughout the West.

With operations in the Geysers and most every significant geothermal hot spot in the West, and increasingly internationally, today might be that day for ThermaSource. The company announced a new round of $41.5 million in equity investment that brings its total raised in the last two years to $93 million. ThermaSource landed the new money from previous investors Riverstone Holdings LLC, a unit of the Carlyle Group, and US Renewables Group, along with venture capital firm Rustic Canyon Partners. (Rustic Canyon is an investor in The Deal LLC.)

While the company is involved directly in the down-and-dirty drilling, mudding and cementing aspects of deep geothermal development, the deal demonstrates how venture capital can play a role in capital-intensive cleantech projects that will ultimately rely primarily on project finance.

Like biofuels, wind energy and clean coal development, geothermal projects will require participation of large existing energy companies with deep financial resources and project finance based on individual properties. But to be successful, these projects will also require specialized services and new technology at the front end, and that is where ThermaSource comes in.

Founded in 1979, it's the only exploration and drilling company that serves the geothermal industry exclusively, and it has been adapting technology and equipment from the oil and gas industry specifically to improve returns on geothermal projects. Riverstone and US Renewables are involved in geothermal development and operations in the Geysers and other areas, but ThermaSource does not have ownership in any projects. The company provides services in exploration and drilling, and Capuano said that while the company has good access to debt financing from partner Glitnir Bank, the new equity investment represents an endorsement of the company's strategy of actively working on new technology development in addition to buying capital-intensive drilling rigs and other equipment.

Geothermal has gotten much less attention than wind and solar power, but it received a huge endorsement when Google Inc. announced that it will be a key part of its billion-dollar commitment to renewable energy development through its RE. - Clifford Carlsen

See Aug. 12 press release from ThermaSource LLC
See Feb. 6 post from Tech Confidential

For more see SiliconTap.com, EnergyCurrent and CleanBreak

Foundry Group leads Lijit's Series C

2008-08-12T16:14:18Z

Blog and social networking search engine developer Lijit Networks Inc. Tuesday said it has raised a $7.1 million third round led by the Foundry Group. Returning investors Boulder Ventures and High Country Venture's Colorado Fund I also participated.

The round follows a $3.3 million Series B in June last year and a $900,000 first round. The two-year-old company, originally known as Outfoxed, offers a browser widget that enables users to search a particular blogger's Web site, bookmarks, blogroll and related media. Lijit said it plans to launch an ad network in addition to its search tool. - Olaf de Senerpont Domis

See Aug. 12 press release on funding from Lijit
See Aug. 12 post on funding from the Lijit blog

For more, see VentureBeat

InterWest Partners closes $650M 10th fund

2008-08-11T16:54:09Z

While some old-school Sand Hill venture firms have honed their strategies over the years to focus on late-stage investments, (think Institutional Venture Partners), or expanded their franchise to encompass multiple specialized funds, both domestic and global, (think Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), InterWest Partners has stuck to an unusually even split between early-stage life sciences and information technology deals, a balance it is sticking with in its newly closed 10th fund.

InterWest Partners X raised $650 million to bring the total amount the firm has raised in its 29-year history to more than $2.8 billion. The fund represents just a slight increase in size from InterWest IX, which closed with $600 million in September 2004, and InterWest expects it to fund 25 to 30 new companies in each sector over a three-year period, with reserves set aside for follow-on investment. In support of its early-stage strategy, InterWest has acknowledged the need to capitalize companies more substantially in each round, which probably will absorb the increase in fund size without increasing dealflow.

The firm's deals will continue to focus on early-stage U.S.-based companies, while retaining the flexibility to go into occasional later-stage opportunities that cross its path. InterWest particularly targets emerging IT markets including software-as-a-service, consumer Internet, online advertising, mobility, and core life sciences therapeutic areas including cardiology, oncology/immunology, infectious diseases, ophthalmology, neurology and orthopedics.

The new fund will be managed by 10 general partners, including seven holdovers from the previous fund and new GPs Chris Ehrlich, Nina Kjellson and Doug Pepper. - Clifford Carlsen

See InterWest Partners Aug. 11 press release
See May 1 post from Tech Confidential
See April 16 post from Tech Confidential

LaunchBox08 brings its first crop of startups to Silicon Valley

2008-08-07T20:52:52Z

Tech accelerator LaunchBox Digital is trotting out the first nine graduates of its summer startup program. After their first demo day in front of a group of potential investors at the Cooley Godward Kronish LLP office in Reston, Va., yesterday, the band of young entrepreneurs hustled to Silicon Valley to present their companies to VCs in Cooley's Palo Alto, Calif., digs.

I could only stick around for the first half of the presentations, but it was worth the trip. The enterpreneurs, most of which seemed to be in their mid-20s, were still polishing their presentations, but all in all they did a pretty good job, and the products they demonstrated all looked quite professional. It was also great to finally meet in person LaunchBox founder Julius Genachowski, formerly general counsel, head of business ops and a member of Barry Diller's office of the chairman at IAC/InterActiveCorp.

In spring, LaunchBox whittled down a stack of 250 applicants into the nine that presented today. They went through a 12-week program during which the LaunchBox team and its advisors honed and modified their business plans. LaunchBox invests $25,000 to $40,000 in exchange for a 6% to 8% stake. Genachowski said he was pleased with the results.

"If you create a destination for talent and creativity, they will come," Genachowski said, adding that this kind of program is especially helpful east of the Mississippi.

Here's a list of the nine startups that completed the accelerator program:

BuzzHubb.com: A university social network startup that bills itself as "bringing the utility of next-gen Yahoo Groups to the mobile college student, but done in a creative, lightweight manner." BuzzHubb's founders are Satjot Sawhney and Ashish Kundra.
Heekya.com: A social networking site that focuses on enabling multi-media storytelling and incorporates pictures, videos and blogging. The startup's founders are David Adewumi, Kwasi Nti, Rasvan Orendovici and Avner Ahmed.
JamLegend.com: Essentially a free, online, multiplayer Guitar Hero game. Andrew Lee, who founded the company with Arjun Lall and Ryan Wilson, said they founded the company because "after we bought Guitar Hero, we were broke, we were bored and we were really, really frustrated." They plan to monetized the site through advertising, artist promotion and distribution services, and selling game widgets that artists could put on their MySpace pages.
Koofers.com: An online repository of past university course exams and study guides. Founders Michael Rihani, Glynn LoPresti and Patrick Gartlan said that after a year of offering their serive at Virginia Tech, they had 60% penetration, 200,000 "koofers" available for students to peruse, and had become the third most popular site among students after MySpace and Facebook. They plan to expand to thirty other colleges this fall, and see monetization opportunities in advertising, textbook sales, job recruitment and e-books. Silicon Alley Insider
Mpowerplayer.com: Founded by Michael Powers, the startup enables consumers to test out mobile phone games on a PC before purchasing them. It has already supported over 15 million demo plays, and is powers the mobile sites of Electronic Arts and Sprint.
MyGameMug.com: The startup describes itself as the Match.com for online gaming, where gamers can find others with similar "gaming styles" and hook up with them to play. MyGameMug's founders are Raymond Lau and Erik Lau.
Razume.com: A job search site that addresses the needs of 21-35 year olds, helping them develop professional resumes and get tips on perfecting it from the Razume community. Sam Blum, Kyle Stoneman and Ryan Geist founded the startup.
ShareMeme.com: This site offers an intelligent platform to broadcast messages and invites to friends by automatically figuring out the best way to get the information to its destination, whether by email, SMS, Twitter or instant messaging. Of the five startups I got to see today, founders Ahson Wardak and Luc Castera's demo was the most clearly compelling. They used their service to poll fellow LaunchBox entrereneurs in the audience on how their presentation went. The majority responded that it didn't go well, but that amounted to a bit of friendly ribbing, most likely.
Zadby.com: The company offers product placement services for online videos, using a network of established producers. Founder Tim McLaughlin and Beau Brewer ran the presentation. -- Olaf de Senerpont Domis

For more, see VentureBeat and Silicon Alley Insider

Exclusive: Tim Draper touts newly funded SkyGrid as tool for gauging market sentiment

2008-08-06T03:00:00Z

Aiming at building a reputation among both technology and investment types as it expands a subscription service for filtered investment news, Silicon Valley startup SkyGrid Inc. is adding former American Express Co. CEO James Robinson and his RRE Ventures fund as lead investor in an $11 million Series B round set to be announced Wednesday.

RRE is joined by the $1.4 trillion money management firm BlackRock Inc., which also is a customer of its service. Seed investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and technolgy pundit Esther Dyson, and additional strategic investors joined the company's list of backers in a $1.25 million Series A round in April 2007. The deal brings total outside investment in SkyGrid to $12.8 million, in addition to an undisclosed amount founder and CEO Kevin Pomplun put into the company to develop technology in its first year (see our video interview with Pomplun below).

Pomplun founded SkyGrid in March 2005 fresh out of college based on a need for greater filtering of news on publicly traded companies he identified through managing his own investments. He self-funded the company and recruited a full technology development team with an undisclosed amount. In the first quarter of 2006, the company raised $550,000 in a seed round from Dyson and Draper Fisher, based on an early product design and marketing plan. The second round funded extensive experimentation with a roster of five money management beta partners before the company launched commercially in February.

Draper Fisher founder and managing director Tim Draper says by e-mail that he was attracted to the investment based on Pomplun's entrepreneurial skills and the market demand, and the fact that SkyGrid has performed on its promise to date.

"SkyGrid is amazing," Draper says. "The concept of getting a 'temperature' on sentiments surrounding a company is becoming reality and will be a growing strategic investor advantage over time. Kevin is a phenomenal CEO, and has exceeded all our expectations."

SkyGrid sells its service to hedge funds, portfolio managers and individual investors for $500 a month per-person, but offers volume discounts for large customers. The service delivers investment news based on customized portfolio lists, and includes major wire services as well as blogs and other online news and commentary sources, rated by reliability. News is delivered in a color-coded format that identifies whether it is positive or negative, and the company has continually refined its features to customize delivery for different clients.

Pomplun said the filtering technology is entirely automated, and while he declined to discuss criteria built into its algorithms, he said about 25 factors are built into its technology for identifying web content by reputation and relevance.

"If you looked at the information landscape prior to the Internet, it was manageable," Pomplun says. "But with the explosion of content you had a fire hose of data that is hard to digest, and people needed a way to filter it."

In addition to identifying investment sentiment, the company's technology also includes software for creating entirely automated summaries of each story it posts. Pomplun said the system was created by working with five initial institutional customers, and he said that about 90% of the current design has come from ideas from customers. -- Clifford Carlsen

See Feb. 13 post on SkyGrid from GigaOm

Investors bet additional $50M on Plastic Logic's e-reader

2008-08-04T19:05:55Z

Once a licensing play based on a broad array of potential applications of breakthrough polymer semiconductor materials, Plastic Logic Ltd. is moving full-speed ahead on manufacturing and marketing its own digital reader consumer electronics products.

The U.K.- and Silicon Valley-based company turned to existing investors Oak Investment Partners and Amadeus Capital Partners as lead investors in a new $50 million investment round that follows a January 2007 round of $100 million that kicked off its internal product strategy, and brings total investment to more than $200 million.

Hermann Hauser, a founding partner of Amadeus, says the long-term strategy on additional applications remains up in the air because the company is focusing on becoming dominant in the e-book field by exploiting what it believes is entirely new technology for flexible paper-like electronic displays. "This is the most fundamental development in semiconductors in 50 years," he says. "It's the first time a polymer material has been put in production for semiconductors, and the focus right now is the introduction of what we consider the most attractive e-reader, and to transform reading from the last medium that we still consume in analog form."

Plastic Logic was founded in December 2000 based on patents developed at the University of Cambridge for printing active-matrix electronic display panels on thin, flexible plastic substrates. The company's proprietary technology is a combination of protected materials and processes that use existing semiconductor equipment for manufacturing scalable displays in high volume and at potentially large area sizes.

The company is currently completing construction of a own manufacturing plant featuring its proprietary process technology in Dresden, Germany to churn out its reading devices, but future applications of is materials could include other types of panel displays, as well as all manner of applications including flexible logic circuits for bar codes and radio frequency identification.

While Oak and Amadeus are the only named investors in the current round, thedeal includes other previous investors, among them, BASF Venture Capital of Germany; Intel Capital of Santa Clara, Calif.; Morningside Technology Ventures of Hong Kong; Quest for Growth NV of Belgium; Amadeus Capital Partners Ltd. of the U.K.; Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America Corp.; Dow Chemical Co. of Midland Mich.; Nanotech Partners Ltd. of Japan; PolyTechnos Venture-Partners GmbH of Germany; Siemens AG of Germany; and Yasuda Enterprise Development Co. of Japan. -- Clifford Carlsen

See 2007 post from Tech Confidential
See Aug. 4 press release from Plastic Logic Ltd.
See Plastic Logic's demo on YouTube

myYearbook.com ups ante in teen site fundraising race

2008-07-30T15:04:44Z

Aiming to gain a larger share of the online teen audience where it already claims leadership, myYearbook.com raised $13 million in a Series B round led by Norwest Venture Partners and existing investors US Venture Partners and First Round Capital.

The company will use the new money to add features to attract teenage participants and monetize their viewership through branded advertising and other revenue generating schemes. MyYearbook cites June figures from Internet rating agency comScore Inc. showing it to be the leading online social site for teenagers, and cites rating agency Hitwise for calling it the fastest-growing, as well as the third-largest, social media community of any kind in the U.S.

The deal brings total investment in myYearbook to $18.6 million, and closely follows an $11 million round competitor Gaia Online announced two weeks ago from Benchmark Capital, Redpoint Ventures and Time Warner Inc. Gaia at the time cited Hitwise as rating it as having the highest average visit time among social networking Web sites. - Clifford Carlsen

See July 30 press release from MyYearbook.com
See July 14 post from TechConfidential

Intel invests in solar synergies with $12.5M Voltaix deal

2008-07-29T20:40:00Z

Following up Intel Corp.'s exploitation of the synergies between semiconductor manufacturing and photovoltaic cell production with the spinoff and $50 million Intel Capital-led investment in Spectrawatt Inc. last month, the venture capital arm of the chip giant has just taken a $12.5 million investment in longtime semiconductor industry vendor Voltaix Inc.

Voltaix has been around for more than 20 years and makes electronic chemicals and gases used in semiconductor manufacturing processes. In recent years, the company has focused squarely on developing new processes and materials for solar materials.

Intel Capital's Sean Doyle says the company's investment is premised on opportunity for strong growth in both areas and follows on the success of recent materials investments, including Japanese technology developer Tri Chemical Laboratories, which went public a year ago, and U.K.-based Epichem Group Ltd., which was sold to Sigma-Aldrich Corp. in February.

Intel is the sole investor in the Voltaix round, the first outside equity the company has taken since its founding in 1986. Doyle say Voltaix has had strong financial growth in recent years, but that new investment will allow it to accelerate its expansion.

"The nice thing about this company is that they are not just in ICs, but are really moving into photovoltaics," Doyle says. "They have a great track record in ICs and are building a record in photovoltaics, and a lot of their expertise is in synthesis of chemicals and gases that are not only enabling technologies, but are proprietary materials." - Clifford Carlsen

See July 29 press release from Voltaix Inc.
See June 16 press release from Intel Capital