News & Analysis
TI acquires Luminary Micro
Dylan McGrath
5/14/2009 6:26 PM EDT
Brian Crutcher, vice president of TI's advanced embedded control (AEC) business, said the acquisition of Luminary Micro and its Stellaris products fills a hole in TI's MCU product portfolio and would allow TI to address the mainstream 32-bit MCU market. TI is now in position to offer customers a single source of MCUs for nearly every application, Crutcher said.
"Cortex-M3 is gaining momentum in the market," Cutcher said. "We saw this as an opportunity to fill a hole."
Luminary Micro becomes a business unit within TI's AEC business. It will remain based in Austin, Texas, and be known as will be known as TI AEC Austin. Jim Reinhart, formerly CEO of Luminary Micro, becomes general manager of TI's Catalog ARM MCU business.
"In terms of fit, I don't think there is a better fit in the industry for what we do," Reinhart said of the acquisition by TI, which he further described as a "remarkable opportunity."
The acquisition will give the Stellaris family access to far reaching technology and "credibility with our customers that our products will be around forever," Reinhart said.
The Stellaris family is geared toward cost-conscious applications requiring significant control processing and connectivity capabilities. Stellaris devices target applications in the transaction control, automation, building control and medical spaces. The Stellaris family was a 2007 finalist for the EE Times ACE Awards ultimate products in the Processors/Memory category.
The recently-announced fourth generation of Stellaris devices, the LM3S9000 series, claims advances in general purpose processing performance and new combinations of connectivity, memory configurations and advanced motion control.
According to TI (Dallas), the company's product line now includes a total of more than 300 16- and 32-bit MCUs.
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svdave
5/15/2009 12:39 AM EDT
I feel sorry for the engineers at Luminary. TI has a horrible track record when it comes to acquisitions. TI has been reducing its investment in digital design and SoC development for sometime now. When the folks at Luminary try to explain why they need 20 engineers on a complex design, the management at TI will balk and cut Luminary's development budget. TI exec management is so risk averse that the most complex design they can commit to is a voltage regulator. And why should the mgmt at TI take any risks? If they take a risk and fail, they're out. If they do nothing except design more voltage regulators, they keep their fat salaries, bonuses, and stock options a little longer. Luminary was acquired because it has a product TI wants right now. Let's see if the folks from Luminary ever develop anything else.
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EmbeddedFlyer
5/15/2009 3:57 PM EDT
This is horrible news! It's like Wal Mart buying Nordstroms! Luminary is a great entrepreneurial company that stands well above *any* of the other ARM chip vendors in terms of innovation, ease of doing business, customer support, etc. Being owned by TI is almost certain to destroy that great entrepeneurial spirit in a dozen different ways like tighter budgets, lay offs, less creativity, lack of freedom, and other typical big company Dilbert-style "merger synergies". I believe Luminary only had around 100 employees. I hope each and every one of them receives a fat bonus out of the deal rather than having all the profits from the sale go into just a few pockets at the top. And if TI messes up Luminary I'll go out of my way to keep their parts out of any designs I have anything to do with.
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danlutes
5/16/2009 2:36 PM EDT
Well, being acquired by TI may not be the "dream come true IPO everyone gets rich" scenario. However, it beats the heck out of fuming or having VC's shut you down even with money still in the bank. Both have happened to promising startups in Austin recently.
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