VCs renew commitment to XMOS in $14m funding round

Investors Amadeus Capital Partners, DFJ Esprit and Foundation Capital have renewed their commitment to fabless semiconductor company, XMOS. XMOS is expected to use the funding to finance further expansion of its international operations.

PRESS RELEASE

Investors Amadeus Capital Partners, DFJ Esprit and Foundation Capital have renewed their commitment to fabless semiconductor company, XMOS, by participating in the company’s latest round of equity funding. XMOS is expected to use the funding of $14m, raised from a small group of existing and new London and Silicon Valley investors, to finance further expansion of its international operations.
This new funding follows the launch of XMOS’s new xCORE-XA extended architecture product family and significant design-win successes including wins at Sony and other major companies. Nigel Toon, President and CEO of XMOS, who is travelling in China this week with the UK Prime Minister as part of a major UK trade delegation said: “Revenue growth at XMOS has been averaging 30% quarter-on-quarter and design-wins at consumer, pro-audio, industrial and automotive customers are accelerating fast. This new investment is an endorsement of our world-class team, category-defining technology and strong market momentum”
XMOS intends to expand its operations in China with the addition of a new support centre in Shenzhen and is opening a new sales office in Japan this month. A major increase in field applications engineering (FAE) support will see the opening of a sales and support office in Germany plus further expansion in resources across North America. At its development centres in Bristol, UK and Chennai, India the company expects its engineering force to double through 2014.
Amadeus’ funding came from Amadeus III and the Amadeus & Angels Seed Fund which, together with DFJ Esprit, provided early stage funding for XMOS in 2006, shortly after the company spun out from Bristol University.
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For further information, please contact: Chantal Ligertwood, PR for Amadeus, 07976 229 210 or Laura Moross at Albion Brand Communication for DFJ Esprit, 07969 673 895.
About Amadeus
Amadeus Capital Partners is one of Europe’s leading technology investors. Since its inception in 1997, the firm has raised over £550m for investment and backed more than 85 companies in communications technology, cleantech, medtech, software, digital media and e-commerce, many of which sell into global markets. Major businesses built by Amadeus include CSR (LSE:CSR), the leading producer of single chip bluetooth radios for short range connections, Solexa, the developer of next generation genetic analysis systems, merged into Illumina (ILMN) to create the world-leader in gene-sequencing technology and Transmode (ST:TRMO), an optical networking solutions business. For more information, please visit www.amadeuscapital.com
About DFJ Esprit
DFJ Esprit is one of Europe’s most experienced venture capital investors, helping entrepreneurs to build ground-breaking technology companies. In the last three years, DFJ Esprit’s exits have generated more than $2.3bn in combined enterprise value.

Portfolio companies include Achica, Apatech (sold to Baxter Healthcare), Conversocial, Datahug, EVE (sold to Synopsys), Graze, Greenpeak, Horizon Discovery, Icera (sold to Nvidia), LOVEFiLM (sold to Amazon), Lyst, Neul, Oxford Immunotec (which recently floated on Nasdaq), SportPursuit, StrikeAd, The Cloud (sold to BSkyB), ZBD Displays and Zeus (sold to Riverbed).
About XMOS
XMOS is an innovative fabless semiconductor company based in Bristol, UK. The company’s wide range of configurable xCORE® multicore microcontrollers allows engineers to create the exact hardware system needed for their application all in software, delivering the next wave in high performance, real-time, programmable system-on-chip solutions. This makes xCORE multicore microcontrollers ideal for demanding embedded applications in audio, automotive, consumer and industrial products, where other microcontrollers struggle. XMOS provides xTIMEcomposer™ Studio, an easy to use development system that makes it simple to design complex embedded systems all in software. For more information please visit www.xmos.com