Nujira Ltd., aleader in Envelope Tracking (ET), has closed a new funding round, raising $20 million for working capital to support the production ramp of its Coolteq chips, and to fund continued development of the company’s long term product roadmap.
Each of the existing angel and major investors participated in the round, including Amadeus Capital Partners, Climate Change Capital, Environmental Technologies Fund, SAM Private Equity and NES Partners. In addition, Investec Bank introduced new investors to the company including GAM (on behalf of its GAM Star Technology strategy) and Investec as well as other institutional and high-net-worth clients.
Tim Haynes, CEO, Nujira said: “Envelope Tracking will shortly be a standard component in 4G smartphones and tablets, but we aren’t just focused on how ET can be implemented in the latest handsets; we are already working on the next three generations of our ET chips. The company is in a strong position, we have good traction with some world-leading customers and we have a compelling product roadmap. The new investment will be important in helping us execute our aggressive growth plans as we look to take advantage of our position as the leading authority on ET.”
To support its product development roadmap Nujira will shortly be opening a new design centre in Santa Clara, California. Adding to Nujira’s world-class design team in the UK, the new design centre will focus on the development of next generation ET ICs. It will also provide a base for local applications and operations support to US-based customers and partners.
Brian Modoff, Senior Technology Analyst, Deutsche Bank US commented: "The rapid rollout of higher data rate 4G networks worldwide across multiple frequency bands is driving up complexity, and hence value, in the RF front end, and the market is forecast to grow to $12 billion by 2018. Envelope Tracking is a fundamental technology which will play a key part in transforming the supply chain, enabling and accelerating the transition to all-CMOS RF front ends – a transition in which Nujira is playing a leading role."
Nujira is currently engaged with all major smartphone chipset vendors and expects its Coolteq.L ET chips to be designed into 4G smartphones in 2014.