NemeriX S.A. receives EUR 25m in record Series-B financing

- NemeriX, a leading GPS chipset provider based near Lugano, Switzerland, closed a EUR 25m Series-B financing round. All existing Series A investors - Atila Ventures, Auriga Partners, PolyTechnos Venture-Partners, and VI Partners, participated. Cadence Design Systems and Oak Investment Partners joined as new investors.

NemeriX is a fabless semiconductor company offering the world’s smallest and lowest power Global Positioning System (“GPS”) chipsets for applications in rapidly growing markets such as Location Based Services (“LBS”) for mobile handsets and other applications, including recreation handheld, PDA, automotive navigation, and asset and people tracking. These markets are expected to exceed EUR 4.5b in 2006.

NemeriX’s unique value proposition lies in its proprietary architecture which delivers significant reduction in power consumption and chip size, offering an improvement of over 70% versus its closest competitors. NemeriX offers both outdoor and indoor solutions and targets the mobile handset market by providing Assisted-GPS (A-GPS).

NemeriX’s technical team originates from the renowned ETH Zurich. Their CEO, Vincent Mouret, brings over 21 years of international semiconductor experience. This Series-B financing represents the largest VC round in a fabless GPS semiconductor company to date. Proceeds from this round will be used for new product development and international expansion.

“Oak strongly believes in the growth potential of existing and emerging GPS applications and the importance of low power to penetrate these markets… NemeriX has both the RF and GPS expertise, as well as the lowest power, high performance solutions to be a leader in this exciting space”, says Bandel Carano, General Partner at Oak, who joins the NemeriX Board.

Vincent Mouret, NemeriX’s CEO, comments: “We are very happy to welcome Oak to our group of leading international investors and are already highly impressed by their operational know-how, network, and ability to add significant value”.

Eric Achtmann, Managing Partner at PolyTechnos, adds: “NemeriX has proven itself over the past year, gaining significant traction, winning major design-ins, and attracting an exceptional team… the addition of Oak and significant capital will go far to help NemeriX realize its full potential”.

Stephen Rees, Chairman of NemeriX and President of Atila Venture Partners, notes: “NemeriX proves that it is possible to build world-class semiconductor companies in Europe… combining exceptional European technical know-how with American market expertise is a winning combination… we are very happy with the Company’s development and prospects”.

About NemeriX

Founded in April 2002, NemeriX S.A. (Lugano, Switzerland) is a venture backed fabless semiconductor company specializing in ultra low power RF and base-band chipsets and software for GPS and wireless applications. NemeriX’s devices and system software enable battery-powered location determination anywhere, anytime, facilitating the design and manufacture of truly differentiated products for both consumer and professional markets. (www.nemerix.com)

About Atila Ventures

Founded in 1999, Atila Venture Partners provides capital, operating and other value adding resources to entrepreneurs in Europe through its fund, ETV. The investment focus is on early stage companies in microelectronics, semiconductors, data communications, and software and the portfolio companies are supported through Atila’s European offices in Lausanne, Munich, and Vienna. (www.atilaventures.com)

About Auriga Partners

Auriga Partners is an independent venture capital firm. Based in Paris, it invests in information technologies and life sciences, in innovative high potential ventures, in seed or early development stages, in Europe, North America and Israel. Auriga Partners manages three funds for a total of more than EUR 180m. Along with investing the necessary capital, Auriga Partners brings also its savoir-faire in developing and solidifying executive teams, organizing companies, broadening their networks and forming strategic and corporate partnerships. (www.aurigapartners.com)

About Oak Investment Partners

Established in 1978, Oak Investment Partners is a venture capital firm with a strong track record as a stage-independent investor. To date, Oak has funded more than 350 companies with aggregate annual revenues in excess of USD 60b. Oak's investment strategy focuses on growth opportunities in enterprise application and infrastructure software, communications equipment and services, semiconductors, data storage, outsourced services, financial services technology, healthcare services, and retail. Located in Westport, CT, and with offices in Minneapolis, MN, and Palo Alto, CA, Oak concentrates on building long-term relationships with experienced management teams to develop successful companies that deliver consistent performance over time such as Actel, Airspan Networks, Compaq, Genzyme, Inktomi (acquired by Yahoo!), Parametric Technology Corporation, PF Changs, Polycom, Seagate Technologies, SMIC, Sybase, Synaptics, Synopsys, TeleAtlas, Virata, Whole Foods, Wireless Facilities (WFII) etc. (www.oakvc.com)
 
About PolyTechnos Venture-Partners

PolyTechnos is an independent European venture capital firm focusing on privately held information technology and life science companies in early stages of development, predominantly in Europe. Areas of expertise comprise communications & networking, electronics & computer hardware, semiconductors, drug development & medtech, and opportunities arising from the convergence of these fields. The PolyTechnos team combines long standing venture capital investment experience with broad international operational and management expertise based on strong technology and life science backgrounds. PolyTechnos helps companies turn technology into business by providing support in areas such as strategy, business development, and organization building. PolyTechnos, located in Munich, Germany, was founded in 1998 and currently advises funds totaling approximately EUR 200m. (www.polytechnos.com)

About Venture Incubator AG

Venture Incubator AG is an evergreen early stage investment fund based in Zug, Switzerland in which 10 industrial and financial corporations have invested CHF 101m. Its mission is to finance IT and life science companies to a stage where large international funds can assume the bulk of the financing.  VI’s portfolio presently comprises 16 companies. (www.vipartners.ch)