SiGe in the money with $19.5m venture round
SiGe Semiconductor, the supplier of front-end RF components for wireless applications, has attracted $19.5 million in new venture finance.
The fabless company, which is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, says that the cash, which has been provided by a number of new and existing partners, will fund product development and growth in operations to support a rapidly expanding customer base.
According to SiGe, company revenue has grown more than ten-fold over the past three years from $3.6 million in 2003 to $23 million in the first half of 2006 alone.
SiGe has had great success in penetrating the wireless LAN power amplifier market, while its products have also landed slots in GPS and Bluetooth applications.
The company will now be looking to the new WiMAX protocol being pushed by the likes of Intel and Sprint to provide opportunities for further revenue growth.
SiGe's CEO Jim Derbyshire says that the new funding will be instrumental in expanding the company's product portfolio to address high-growth markets in cellular, GPS and WiMAX.
The expansion round sees two of the venture backers joining the SiGe Semiconductor board of directors - Bill Seifert from Prism, and Sean Brownlee from 3i.
