Chipidea raises $15 million to pursue fabless growth

LONDON — Chipidea Microelectronica SA (Lisbon, Portugal) a developer of analog and mixed-signal circuit designs available for license, has closed a second round of venture capital funding at 12 million euro (about $15.2 million). The company intends to use funds to continue expansion of its intellectual property (IP) business and to launch products under a fabless chip company business model.

The funding round was led by Kennet Venture Partners who were joined in this round by Vision Capital and Chipidea's Series A investors BCP Capital and BPI/Fundo Caravela.

Founded in 1997, Chipidea has achieved profitable, double-digit growth each year since its formation and now employs more than 180 people in offices in the Portugal, Belgium, Poland, the U.S., and mainland China, the company said. The company, led by chief executive officer Jose Franca, received about 3 million euro (about $3.8 million) in Series A finance in 2001.

"Jose Franca and his colleagues have built a world class semiconductor IP business using very little external capital," said Michael Elias of Kennet Venture Partners. "Kennet specializes in providing expansion financing to capital-efficient business with global opportunities. We are therefore delighted at the opportunity to invest in Chipidea and help take it to it next level of development."

Paul Costigan, formerly chief executive officer of Massana Ltd. (Dublin, Ireland), has joined ChipIdea as chief operating officer, and helped set up the venture capital deal. Massana, a developer of Gigabit Ethernet-over-copper physical layer device technologies was acquired by Agere Systems Inc. (Allentown, Pa.) for $26 million in stock, in August 2003.