VIRTENSYS SECURES US$12M IN SERIES A FUNDING
MANCHESTER, UK and PALO ALTO, CA – October 25, 2006 – VirtenSys Ltd., a leading developer in the emerging and fast growing PCI Express™ IO virtualization market, today announced the closing of a US$12 million first round of financing from a syndicate including Scottish Equity Partners (SEP), Celtic House Venture Partners (CHVP) and GIMV. SEP led the deal with SEP, CHVP and GIMV co-investing equally. The investment enables the Company to add to its team, complete its product development and generate initial revenues. “The Company is ideally positioned with the backing of such a strong and experienced investor group to become the industry's preferred supplier of PCIe I/O virtualization solutions,” said Tony Palmer, CEO of VirtenSys.
It is predicted that by 2010, 25% of all IT services will be supplied through utility computing models, substantially increasing the requirements for more dynamic workload capabilities to meet the needs of the emerging business models. VirtenSys’ technology allows system developers to build data centers that can adapt instantaneously to any workload, self-configure and self-heal in event of failures, and operate at significantly higher utilizations than today’s systems.
VirtenSys, a fabless semiconductor company, provides critical IO virtualization solutions to the data centers, storage and networking infrastructure markets. Its products increase the servers’ utilization in the data center while decreasing the IT asset and ownership cost. VirtenSys’ strategy is standards compliant and is based on an evolutionary migration path that allows dramatic improvements in the value, space requirements, effectiveness, power and thermal usage of both newly installed and existing IT infrastructure.
"There are major challenges facing the IT industry today trying to balance the conflicting needs of limited IT budget growth while reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) and improving the systems utilization and performance," said Stuart Paterson, a Director in SEP’s Information Technology group. "Semiconductor vendors like VirtenSys are increasingly responsible to deliver cutting-edge semiconductor solutions that OEMs rely upon to meet those needs."
Dr. Tomas Valis, Partner at Celtic House Venture Partners, noted, "We are very excited about VirtenSys' technology and experienced team. VirtenSys' architecture will speed the industry migration towards virtualization and more efficiency in the data centers."
“VirtenSys has attracted very strong interest from the world’s leading providers of powerful networking and storage systems for the agile data center,” said Rudi Severijns, Executive Investment Manager with GIMV. “It’s a powerful backing of the differentiating technology the company has developed as well as a strong indicator for the growing need for such solutions in the market place.”
VirtenSys was founded in December 2005, and has assembled an exceptional team of experts in semiconductor and system development across a wide range of protocols and technologies with background at ICL, Fujitsu, Power X and Xyratex. The majority of the team was most recently with the Integrated System Division of Xyratex. Today, the Company’s headquarters and engineering operations are located in Manchester, UK with marketing, business development and sales offices in Silicon Valley.
Tony Palmer added, "The trend towards efficient merchant solutions for the data centers, storage and networking infrastructure will continue. VirtenSys' products will enable OEM vendors to build dynamic and tiered data centers based on cost and performance effective servers and platforms."
About VirtenSys, Ltd.
VirtenSys is a leading supplier of PCIe IO virtualization silicon solutions. VirtenSys was incorporated in December 2005 and is led by a team of semiconductor and system veterans. VirtenSys is privately held with initial funding from Scottish Equity Partners, Celtic House Venture Partners and GIMV. Its headquarters and engineering operations are in Manchester, UK with sales and marketing offices in Silicon Valley.
For further information, visit our web site at www.virtensys.com
About Scottish Equity Partners
Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) is one of the largest and most successful venture capital firms in Europe, with over $500 million under management. With offices in Glasgow and London, SEP focuses on investments in information technology, healthcare & life sciences and energy related technology businesses. The specialist sector teams invest in companies throughout the UK, from start-up through to pre-IPO, in financings of up to $50 million.
The firm is one of the most experienced in Europe with over 15 years experience of backing and building world-class businesses. With many successful exits in the form of trade sales and IPOs across Europe, the US and Asia, the SEP team focus on global opportunities from the outset.
In recent years successes in the semiconductor sector include backing the two largest exits; Bluetooth specialist CSR, which is now worth around $1.5 billion, in which SEP led the last crucial round immediately before the company’s hugely successful flotation; and Wolfson Microelectronics, which is now valued at £445 million, where SEP was involved with the company from the earliest seed round when it spun out of the University of Edinburgh.
Our experience of working with companies like these has given SEP a reputation in the industry of identifying companies with high potential at an early stage and working with them to realise that potential as they face the challenges of building a successful business.
Further information on SEP and portfolio companies can be found at www.sep.co.uk
About Celtic House Venture Partners
Celtic House Venture Partners, a private venture capital firm with headquarters in Ottawa, Canada, is a leading investor in early-stage technology companies in North America and Europe. Celtic House is actively investing its third fund of US$225 million in semiconductors, systems and software start-ups. Celtic House’s current portfolio in which Celtic House was the first institutional investor includes: Cavendish Kinetics, Diablo Technologies, Fresco Microchip, Got Corp, Novx Systems, Redmere Technology, Sandvine, Sirific, Third Brigade, TrialStat, Tropic Networks and ViXS Systems.
For more information, please visit www.celtic-house.com.
About GIMV
Since its incorporation in 1980 GIMV has grown into Belgium's most important venture capital provider and company-builder. GIMV has now become a major European and international market player. Both in Belgium and abroad, GIMV invests in information and communication technology, life sciences as well as in growth financing and management buy-outs (MBOs) of companies in more traditional sectors. With its own portfolio and third party fund activities together GIMV today manages more than EUR 1.4 billion. GIMV has been listed on Euronext Brussels since 1997.
For further information, visit our web site at www.gimv.com
For further information, please contact:
In the UK and Europe:
Tony Palmer
CEO, VirtenSys
+44 (0) 161 246 6870
info@virtensys.com
In the US:
Robert Napaa
VP of Business Development, VirtenSys
650-814-4883
napaa@virtensys.com