Seattle-based Tera Computer Company has received $6m through a private sale of common stock to two institutional investors. The supercomputer firm, long on R&D and short on product, has spent over 10 years and at least $70m in developing its MTA multithreaded architecture supercomputers. It delivered its first product, a $4m two processor system to the San Diego Supercomputer Center early in 1998 (CI No 3,394). The company was due to add another two processors to the San Diego system by September 30 but according to CFO Ken Johnson the company is still ironing minor hardware problems. Johnson says that Tera is preparing for a major share offering in 1999. He could not put a figure on what the offering would be worth, but said that the company was shooting for $50m.
