Three customers, STMicroelectronics, ARM Ltd. and Sony Corp. invest in CoWare

Three customers invest in CoWare
By Richard Goering, EE Times
August 7, 2000 (3:32 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000731S0021

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — CoWare Inc., a provider of hardware/software co-design tools, has received a combined $14 million in equity investments from STMicroelectronics, ARM Ltd. and Sony Corp. The investment, which is unusually large for a small EDA company, comes on top of another $14 million received by CoWare in two previous venture financing rounds.

All three of the new investors are longtime CoWare customers or partners, and each will take an undisclosed equity share in the company. The previous investors were venture capital firms, including Greylock, Needham & Co.; GIMV; and IT Partners.

CoWare chief executive Guido Arnout said the latest funding will be used to expand the company's sales channel. "We have worked in a very focused way with a limited set of customers," he said. "We need to expand to new customers."

CoWare provides N2C, a tool suite that allows C language design, high-level simulation, hardware/software partitioning and synthesis of the "interface" hardware and software needed to connect logic blocks.

Alain Duthell, corporate vice president for strategic planning at STMicroelectronics, said his company has reduced the time required to create a system platform to six months from 24 months using N2C.

CoWare is privately held and employs around 120 people. Other major CoWare customers include Motorola, Nokia and Alcatel.