Sytemonic receives $30 million

Just 18 months after starting up with $5 million of seed funding provided by Atlas Venture and Technologie Beteiligungs Gesellschaft, and led by the former, Systemonic has secured second round funding of $30 million. This second round was led by Apax Partners Europe IV Fund and includes Lehman Brothers, Robertson Stephen’s Bayview 2000 Fund and Krone mt. As a result of this recent funding round Dr Christian Reitberger of Apax Partners joins the supervisory board of Systemonic.

Dr Reitberger said: “Systemonic has developed a technology that can be applied across many areas of the wireless semiconductor market – estimated to be worth $18 billion by 2004.”

Systemonic was founded in July 1999 and its spin out from the Dresden University of Technology was led by Professor Gerhard Fettweis and Dr Michael Bolle and colleagues. Alexander Bruehl, principal at Atlas Venture’s Munich office, said of this time: “Professor Fettweis was giving a lecture about the area of work he was focusing on at a conference we attended. What we listened to sounded as if it was a fundamental breakthrough in the way chips could potentially be designed and manufactured. We were highly excited by the commercial opportunities it represented in the broadband wireless arena and approached him soon after… Systemonic was the result of that conversation.”

Today Systemonic has 40 employees and will use this latest funding round to expand its business into the US and Asia as well as growing its European sales operation and accelerating product development.

Systemonic has pioneered a highly flexible breakthrough technology in the form of its OnDSP(tm) platform aimed at the broadband wireless communication markets such as high-end telecommunications and Internet content and video streaming.

Unlike traditional chip design where functionality is hardwired into the silicon, Systemonic’s approach allows core functionality for broadband wireless systems to be realised in software layers on the chip. As a result significant flexibility is given, Systemonic being able to quickly support early or late changes in emerging wireless standards as well as provide simultaneous support for converging wireless standards. An additional benefit of Systemonic’s approach is that the design time and production costs for chips are significantly reduced. Systemonic plans to ship first chipsets at the end of the first quarter this year.