$14 million start-up financing for Elixent

Investee Company – Elixent

Investee Company Business Type – Develops embedded semiconductor intellectual property technology

Type of Financing – Start-up

Equity Providers – 3i Group, Actel Corporation and Hewlett-Packard

Equity Leader (Individual) –

Debt Providers – N/A

Debt Type – N/A

Debt Leader (Individual) – N/A

Equity Amount – $14 million (£9.8 million)

Total Deal Value – $14 million (£9.8 million)

Other Advisors – N/A

Comments – Elixent, a spin-off company from Hewlett Packard’s Bristol Research laboratories, has raised initial financing of $14 million from a consortium of investors led by 3i Group and including Actel Corporation and Hewlett-Packard. Elixent will use the funding to bring its semiconductor IP technology to market.

Based in Bristol, Elixent was founded in October 2000. The company designs embedded technology that can reconfigure chips to perform different functions. This patented technology enables companies producing electronic products to save chip redesign and manufacturing costs by enabling chips to be used in more than one product.

Elixent’s technology is designed to be embedded in complex system chips used in applications such as digital cameras and printers. A reconfigurable ALU (arithmetic logic unit) array allows the configuration and the computational functionality to be easily changed after silicon has been fabricated.

“Reconfigurable platform chips bring a new dimension to the design of digital technology-based products,” said Kenn Lamb, Chief Executive Officer of Elixent.

“The benefits of reconfigurability including time to market, feature flexibility, and the optimisation of cost, size and power consumption will be easily accessible to chip designers utilising Elixent’s tools and products.”

“Elixent represents an important strategic investment for 3i’s semiconductor portfolio,” said Laurence Garrett, Director Semiconductor Group, 3i Group.”The market for reconfigurable hardware and related software tools is set for rapid growth. The Elixent team has worked on this opportunity for many years, created robust IPR and has the opportunity to successfully grow into a major international company.”