NEC Corp. and Sharp Corp. have taken equity positions of less than 5 percent. Sony Corp., investing in Tao for a second time, has taken its stake to between 5 and 10 percent. Motorola Inc., an investor in Tao since 1996, did not invest in this round and its stake was diluted to less than 20 percent, according to Tao chairman Francis Charig.

"Tao's Intent product has been emerging as a major player for the current generation of client devices, and the investment will allow us to pursue an aggressive go-to-market strategy to achieve our commercial goals," he said.

Charig added that the money would be used for business development and marketing in Europe and North America, as well as for increased R&D expenditure. As a the business development, Charig said he was hopeful of signing up one or two equity partners from Europe.

"We are talking to a couple of corporations of the caliber of Motorola, NEC, Sharp and Sony," Charig said. "We have been very successful in Japan, now we intend to extend that success."

In July, Tao was part of a group of about two dozen Japanese consumer electronics manufacturers that founded the Open Contents Platform Association, which selected Intent as its base platform for developing applications for multimedia-capable clients.

Intent is based on hardware-language-independent translation-software technology developed at Tao. It is being used most often as a Java enabler and enhancer in embedded systems.

Tao claims that the use of the Intent Java Technology Edition and the company's just-in-time (JIT) compiler techniques can create an embedded Java virtual machine that is fast enough for interactivity but with less code bloat than other JIT compilers. Code bloat of less than a factor of two is typical when Intent is used to convert Java byte code to native code, the company claims.

"Our Mobile Information Device Platform sits on top of Intent and performance-wise, we're running real-world content 30 to 40 times faster than the norm in a very tight footprint," said Charig.

Along with graphics routines and codecs to accompany Intent, Tao has also developed its own real-time operating system, called Elate. Intent can also be used with third-party operating systems.

"NEC, one of the leading mobile handset suppliers in Japan, has decided to make this investment because we recognize that Tao has technologies in this area that give it advantages over the other companies in this important sector," said Koji Yamasaki, assistant general manager of NEC's mobile terminals division.

Toru Chiba, group deputy general manager of corporate research and development at Sharp, said that his company would incorporate Intent as the platform on which a range of future products would be based. Sharp has already announced plans to introduce a 3G-capable personal digital assistant that includes Intent.

Sony's commitment comes from its venture capital department.

"Sony first invested in Tao in late 1999, and we are very pleased to demonstrate our continued support by participating in this third financing round," said Hiro Uchida, general manager of Sony's strategic-venture investment department.

"Motorola, having been the first corporate investor into Tao, back in 1996, is delighted to welcome these other companies as investors into Tao," said Ray Burgess, corporate vice president of Motorola and a member of Tao's board of directors for almost five years. "We believe that the promise of Tao is extremely exciting and we will continue to offer our full support."

Tao was founded in 1992 by Charig and Chris Hinsley, a computer games writer and now technology director of the company. Since then Tao has received about $30 million in funding, including its most recent round, and has expanded to a head count of 75 people.

Tao's Intent has yet to figure in commercially available products. But that could be about to change, with a number of prototype PDA, cell phone and set-top boxes being demonstrated and with the announced backing from NEC, Sharp, Sony, and the Open Contents Platform Association.

At the JavaOne exhibition held in San Francisco in June, Tao demonstrated prototype products including a Sharp Zaurus PDA, Psion's Netbook handheld computer, a combined Internet terminal and set-top box from Grundig, a Compaq iPaq PDA and a Motorola cell phone.