The $20.5m Series C round of funding was led by Scottish Equity Partners, which was joined by Rothschild and Intel Capital. The involvement of Intel’s venture arm follows the recent announcement that Intel is using PicoChip’s technology for the PHY layer of its WiMax demonstrator.
We will use this funding to expand on PicoChip’s success in WiMax and deliver products for WCDMA, TD-SCDMA and other wireless markets, said Guillaume d’Eyssautier, president and CEO in a statement.
It is thought that the funds will be used to hire more engineers to develop the architecture for WiMax as well as W-CDMA. While PicoChip has traditionally backed both approaches, it is thought to have been concentrating heavily on WiMax.
Central to the PicoChip platform is a scalable, multi-processor baseband IC, which it claims offers 10 times the performance per dollar of any other device. It says that equipment based on its technology will enable telecom operators to remotely reconfigure and upgrade their equipment without the need to replace obsolete hardware.
It is looking good for PicoChip at the moment, as it also looks likely to benefit from the 21CN project at BT Group Plc. It supplies chips to Airspan Networks Inc, who in turn supplies WiMAX equipment to Fujitsu Telecoms, which was awarded the contract to supply access technologies (DSL, WiMax and fibre) for 21CN.
PicoChip’s last round of funding was back in October 2003, when the Bath, UK-based outfit closed a $17m second round of funding to bring the total amount now raised to $41.5m.
