Company Will Use Funding To Deliver UWB Chipsets to Market
Austin, TX, January 6, 2004 - Alereon, the leading Ultra Wideband (UWB) semiconductor company producing chipsets for the personal area networking (PAN) market, today announced it has received $31.5 million in the first round of its Series A financing. Alereon will use the proceeds to complete development of its UWB chipset solution, bring its product to market, secure design wins, and achieve initial revenue. The Series A round was led by Austin Ventures with participation by Pharos Capital, Centennial Ventures, Kinetic Ventures, eCentury Capital, Duchossois Technology Partners, PTV Sciences and other investors. The company expects to close on a small amount of additional funding in early 2004 to complete its Series A financing round.
"This funding round marks a major milestone for the company," said Eric Broockman, chief executive officer of Alereon. "We launched Alereon a few months ago with the industry's most experienced management and engineering team and an unrivaled intellectual property portfolio. Today, we add sufficient capital to finish development of our product, deliver our products to customers, and grow initial revenue. In addition to the capital, we gained the partnership of world-class investors with extensive expertise working with semiconductor and wireless companies."
Launched in September 2003, Alereon is a fabless semiconductor company producing chipsets for high-speed connectivity among personal computers and peripherals, consumer electronics, and mobile devices. The company's first product will cost-effectively connect consumers' televisions, PCs, camcorders, digital cameras, printers and other peripheral devices, DVDs and MP3 players to one another at hundreds of megabits per second using very little power. Alereon's chipset will function as a wireless USB or IEEE 1394 connection, replacing the cables that connect personal computing and consumer electronics devices together today.
"Alereon is now the best-funded company in the UWB industry and the leading UWB company to watch," said Basil Horangic, chairman of Alereon and a partner with Austin Ventures. "To the best of my knowledge, Alereon is the only company fully funded to develop a complete UWB solution consisting of a radio, baseband, media access controller and software. The company will not need to depend on other companies to complete its product offering. With more than 12 months of work already completed on parts of Alereon's solution, it should be difficult for companies entering the UWB market to catch up."
Alereon is currently demonstrating its Media Access Controller solution, which is designed to enable mesh networking. The company is working with leaders in both the consumer electronics and personal computing industries to deliver a complete UWB solution that is low power, high performance and integrates easily into customers' systems. The company expects to be shipping MBOA-compliant chipsets to customers by the end of 2004.
"Parks Associates considers Ultra Wideband to be the key next generation personal area networking solution," said Kurt Scherf, Vice President of Research for Parks Associates. "Ultra Wideband technologies offer the advantages of very high data rates with quality of service for multimedia applications at low cost and power consumption. This level of funding for Alereon, one of the leading companies in Ultra Wideband, should enable them to attack this market effectively."
Alereon is a founding member of the WiMedia UWB-industry group and the MBOA, a group of 42 companies -- including seven of the world?s 10 largest semiconductor vendors and support from all of the world?s leading consumer electronics companies -- backing the leading IEEE standards proposal for UWB PAN technology.
* * *
About Alereon, Inc.
Alereon, Inc., a new UWB fabless semiconductor company, is developing and deploying UWB chipsets for personal area networking applications that comply with the emerging IEEE standard (802.15.3a). The company is targeting high-bandwidth, low-power, low-cost solutions to connect wirelessly consumer electronics, computer peripherals, and mobile devices. Further information is available on the company?s website: www.alereon.com.
About Austin Ventures
Austin Ventures has been working with talented entrepreneurs to build valuable companies since 1979. With $2.4 billion under management, AV is the most active venture capital firm in Texas, and one of the most established in the nation. With a focus on enterprise software, computer and communications hardware, and business services, Austin Ventures invests at all stages of company development, from $100,000 "planned experiments" to $50 million investments in management buyouts.
About Pharos Capital
Founded in 1998, Pharos Capital Partners is among the leading venture capital firms in the Southeastern and Southwestern United States. The goal of Pharos is to assist exceptional entrepreneurs in meeting and exceeding their goals to build innovative and market leading companies. In pursuit of this goal, Pharos focuses on providing growth capital, management guidance and capital markets expertise to companies in the fields of technology, health care and business services in underserved markets throughout the US.
About Centennial Ventures
For over 20 years Centennial Ventures has partnered with extraordinary entrepreneurs to build successful businesses. Centennial invests in network companies and related enabling software and technology enterprises, with the potential to be markets leaders. Centennial has over $1 billion under management and offices in Austin, Denver, and Houston.
About Kinetic Ventures
Founded in 1984, Kinetic Ventures is a leading provider of capital to entrepreneurial companies addressing growth markets related to communications, Internet and customer service. The company?s strong track record includes investments in Ciena, Cerent, Corvis, NetCore Systems, Peace Software, PlaceWare, Ramp Networks and VerticalOne. Kinetic Ventures has offices in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Atlanta, Georgia. Kinetic Ventures can be reached via telephone at 301-652-8066 or at www.kineticventures.com .
About ECentury Capital
ECentury Capital, based in McLean, Virginia, is a $90 million balanced-stage venture capital fund that makes investments throughout the eastern United States. They invest in distinctive technology companies in many sectors of information technology, including wireless, storage, security, enterprise software, data mining, data networking, and communications networks and components. ECentury Capital gives its portfolio companies the power to accelerate their businesses into global markets by leveraging their active institutional partners Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Allied Capital and Rothschild. Learn more about ECentury Capital by visiting www.ecenturycapital.com .
About Duchossois Technology Partners
Duchossois Technology Partners (DTEC) is a leading Midwest venture capital firm based in Chicago. DTEC is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs build successful enterprises and focuses on early-stage investments in networking, semiconductors, and software.
About PTV Sciences
PTV Sciences L.P. is a Texas based seed and early stage investor in both the life sciences (medical devices, biomaterials, and pharmaceuticals) and materials sciences (semiconductors and advanced materials). PTV focuses on science and engineering based companies with novel ideas, and typically invests between $250,000 as "start-up" capital to $6 million for more developed companies. Additionally, PTV works with the academic research institutions in Texas to support the transfer of intellectual property from the academic setting into commerce.
