Energy Micro plans to raise $10 million in 2010

LONDON — Energy Micro AS (Oslo, Norway), the startup that has brought the Gecko family of 32-bit microcontrollers to market, is planning to raise about $10 million in venture capital in the first half of 2010.

The company has got to silicon on its founders' money together with some large tranches of cash from lead customers. So far staff members have put up about $6 million and two lead customers have put up a similar amount, however the equity is entirely in the hands of the staff, said Geir Forre, founder and CEO.

The staff could afford to do this because many of them are former employees of Chipcon ASA, a ZigBee wireless chip company that Forre sold to Texas Instruments for $200 million in January 2006.

"We're looking at Series A round in the first half of 2010; approximately $10 million. That should be sufficient to bring us to profitability," Forre told EE Times. Forre said he plans for Energy Micro to have 1 percent of the microcontroller market in 2017, which should be equivalent to $300 million in annual revenue.

Related links and articles:

www.energymicro.com

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