Arm, a Nasdaq and London-listed chip maker, and the long-term corporate venturing unit of mutual fund manager Fidelity International have reinvested in UK-based smart grid company Amantys.
Moonray Investors, which invests using Fidelity’s balance sheet to look for long-term investments in clean-tech and healthcare, and Arm invested $8m in Amantys’ series B round, following their $7m investment in July last year.
Intellectual property fund manager IP Group joined Amantys’ founders in a $1m seed round in 2010, news provider EE Times said, but was bought out by Moonray in the A round.
Amantys has patented technology to reduce size and power consumption of power-switching devices used in high voltage motor drives and renewable energy systems.
Nicky McCabe, chief operating officer at Moonray Investors, said: “We have continued to be really impressed with the success that Amantys has achieved over the last year, bringing new and disruptive products to market. This investment round will enable the company to grow the commercial organisation and extend its global presence “
Also in November, Amantys hired Steve Evans as vice-president of marketing to develop sales channels and building its global organisation after more than 20 years working at Hitachi, Arm – where he had been vice-president of segment marketing – and Frontier Silicon, recently acquired by Toumaz.
Vincent Korstanje, vice-president of segment marketing at Arm, is joining Amantys’ board and said: “Amantys’ unique power switching technology delivers significant energy savings in medium and high voltage markets. This year Amantys added the Power Insight product that provides real-time monitoring and control of the power switch in order to further improve energy efficiency and reliability.
“This is a great example of the ‘internet of things’ in which Arm-based processors are used to make a product more efficient by adding sensors, machine to machine communication, and remote diagnostics and control.”