The price of the deal was 20% of TMT’s shares (TMT Coaxial Networks was valued at $13.5 million for the deal). TMT will also receive Tiaris’s $2.5 million cash reserves.
Tiaris provided solutions for digital video broadcasting over coaxial cables. Its high-speed system-on-chip technology enabled home networking for distribution of multimedia contents such as video, interactive TV, hi-fi audio and broadband data over the existing coax. Unfortunately, this did not save the company, which recently shut down its activities.
According to figures from the Israel Venture Capital (IVC) Research Center, Tiaris had raised $12 million to date from venture capital funds Cedar Fund, Giza Venture Capital, and Kodiak Venture Partners. When the deal is completed, representatives of the funds will join TMT’s board of directors.
TMT was founded back in 2001 and has 35 employees. It has its headquarters and R&D center in Jerusalem, Israel (Tiaris had a R&D center in Herzelia) but also has an office in Cupertino, California.
TMT has raised a total of $6.8 million in VC funding. Its most recent financing round was in 2003, when it raised $3 million from Genesis Partners and StageOne Ventures. According to CEO David Cohen, TMT began selling its products in recent months, and it expects to reach the break-even point by 2006, without raising any further capital before that time.
In conjunction with the transaction, Avi Kliger (Tiaris’ co-founder and CTO), has joined TMT as VP Technology.
