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Sequoia Communications Raises $15 Million
in Series D Funding
The Leader in Multi-Mode Wireless Communications
Wins Venture Capitalists' Support
San Diego – Dec. 8, 2004 – Sequoia Communications, the RF semiconductor company setting new benchmarks in multi-mode design and integration, today announced the company has successfully secured $15 Million in series D financing. Gabriel Ventures, a premier venture capital firm in Northern California, has led the round. Also contributing to this over-subscribed round were all previous investors, including highly respected Nokia Venture Partners, Tallwood Venture Capital, Cadence Design Systems and Huntington Ventures.
The closure of the company's series D funding is a culmination of this year’s work by Dave Shepard, new chief executive officer and member of the board of directors. Dave Shepard joined Sequoia Communications about a year ago from Texas Instruments, bringing 17 years of leadership experience to the Sequoia Communications team. His strong technology and management background along with his confidence in the company’s multi-mode advanced solutions have helped Dave Shepard lead the company to reach significant series D financial support.
“We firmly believe that all wireless terminals will be ‘multi-mode’ going forward, combining multiple standards like GSM, EDGE and WCDMA, with systems like WLAN, Bluetooth, GPS and others,” said Mr. Shepard. “Sequoia Communications has taken a leadership role in creating an RF transceiver architecture that can integrate any combination of these modes in less than half the time of those using conventional architectures. This additional capital will accelerate the rollout of Sequoia Communications’ revolutionary products and will assist in global expansion.”
With the announcement, Tim Chang, principal and wireless sector lead at Gabriel Venture Partners, joins the company’s board of directors.
“After evaluating the entire landscape of next-generation multimode RF components, Gabriel Venture Partners was convinced that Sequoia Communications’ innovative technology dramatically shortens the RF design cycle,” said Mr. Chang. “The company is uniquely positioned to deliver advanced RF transceivers for multi-mode communications. This market opportunity fits perfectly with Gabriel Venture Partners' ongoing investment thesis in advanced handset components, and we look forward to actively partnering with Sequoia Communications to achieve significant milestones in growing a global customer base and securing strategic industry partners.”
Sequoia will use the funding to solidify its position in the RFIC semiconductor market by delivering the industry's most highly integrated, multi-mode solution. The funding will enable the company to further expand its sales, marketing and business development efforts around the globe as Sequoia Communications prepares to launch its products into the market in 2005.
“Sequoia Communications’ unique technology will accelerate the time to market for handset manufacturers and make ‘multi-mode’ a reality, ” said John Gardner, general partner, Nokia Ventures. “We see strong potential for Sequoia’s innovative RF design to set new standards in the wireless market and create opportunities for Sequoia’s global business expansion moving forward.”
With this round of investing, Sequoia will now be funded well into 2006, beyond the introduction of the products next year.
About Sequoia Communications
Sequoia Communications enables wireless handset manufacturers to accelerate their time to market by shortening the RF design cycle of integrated multi-mode solutions. A fabless semiconductor company, Sequoia Communications develops novel, patented technology that solves the most challenging aspects of RF system and circuit design. The company uniquely integrates different modes using a common architecture on a single chip enabling effective communications across multiple wireless standards including GSM/GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA, GPS, WLAN and more. Single-chip RF transceivers developed using Sequoia’s innovative approach and common architecture will set new industry benchmarks in chip cost, component count, PCB size and power consumption. Founded in 2000, Sequoia Communications is headquartered in San Diego. For more information, please visit www.sequoiacommunications.com.
About Gabriel Venture Partners
Gabriel Venture Partners® is a hands-on, early-stage venture capital firm with more than $260M under management across its offices in Silicon Valley and the Mid-Atlantic. Gabriel’s team of investors actively partner with portfolio companies and leverage their combined operating experience to provide value through customer and partner introductions, as well as assistance with go-to-market strategy and positioning. Gabriel focuses on specific sectors of information technology, including Wireless, Disruptive Technology Components, Infrastructure Software & Systems, and Enterprise Software & Services. Representative investments include Placeware (acquired by Microsoft), IPWireless, Iridigm (acquired by Qualcomm) and Netscaler. For more information, please visit: www.GabrielVP.com.
About Nokia Venture Partners
Nokia Venture Partners is an independent, global venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California, and backed by a number of value-add limited partners. Launched in 1998, the fund leads investments in early-stage technology companies worldwide and has a strong track record of leveraging its combined resources, experience and contacts to help build large, successful global businesses. The firm also has offices in Helsinki, Hong Kong, London, New Delhi, Seoul, Tel Aviv, Tokyo and Washington D.C. For more information, visit www.nokiaventurepartners.com.
About Tallwood Venture Capital
Tallwood Venture Capital is a venture capital firm focusing on semiconductors and semiconductor related technologies. Tallwood's practice is based on a deep understanding of markets, the impact technology will have on them and a hands-on, very active involvement post investment. Tallwood also utilizes a best- in -class team of consultants and advisors to help build their practice and work directly with their portfolio companies. Tallwood’s vision is to actively help entrepreneurs to develop and grow technology-based start ups into world-class companies. For more information, please visit: www.tallwoodvc.com.
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