Mobile video processor startup raises $7.5 million

LONDON — Fabless mobile video chip company Movidius Ltd. (Dublin, Ireland) has announced that it has secured $7.5 million in Series B investment.

The funding round has been concluded with existing shareholders including Celtic House Venture Partners, Capital E, Emertec Gestion, AIB Seed Capital Fund and angel investors. It brings the total raised by Movidius, to $20.5 million.

Movidius, founded in 2005 as Movidia, has silicon of its processor running software in-house but is yet to sample customers, according to a source at the company. The combination of processor and software is called Myriad. The software enables a range of analytical tasks to be performed on multimedia data including real-time editing of video content and the capture of 3D mobile video. It can also be used to configure video settings in real-time to improve bandwidth utilization.

Movidius' Myriad platform helps mobile handset OEMs substantially differentiate their multimedia smartphone offering while also providing operators with significant cost advantages and new revenue streams.

"This investment will enable us to drive our first products into high volume production and to capitalize on the exploding mobile industry demand for the unique new user experiences we are enabling with the Myriad platform such as 3D mobile video," said Sean Mitchell, CEO of Movidius, in a statement.

In the same statement Roger Maggs, partner at Celtic House Venture Partners commented: "We continue to invest in Movidius because we are confident of its ability to deliver a truly world-class technology that will fundamentally revolutionize the way in which users interact with their mobile handsets in a rapidly growing market."

Mass production of Movidius' products is expected to begin later in 2010, with mobile handsets containing those products due to appear in the market early in 2011.

Related links and articles:

www.movidius.com

A video of Mitchell discussing Movidius' Series B funding round can be seen at http://bit.ly/9c8rau

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