US-based chip manufacturer Qualcomm’s corporate venturing unit Qualcomm Ventures has helped memory chip manufacturer Avalanche Technology close its Series D investment round for $30m.
The deal saw invetment from new investor VTB Capital, the investment unit of the Russia-based bank, as well as full participation from its current investors including venture firms Vulcan Capital, Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Thomvest Ventures.
Aidar Kaliev, global head of venture capital at VTB Capital, will be joining Avalanche’s board.
The California-based Avalanche has raised more than $49m in funding. In January, it received $11.5m in Series C funding led by Seattle-based venture firm Vulcan Capital, founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and was joined in participation by Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Thomvest Ventures, and investment firm Leader Ventures.
In February 2010, Avalanche received $7.5m in Series B investment from Bessemer Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Thomvest Ventures.
The funds will be used to further develop Avalanche’s memory chip technology, which most notably includes SPMEM™/STT-MRAM. Joining the best features of different types of memory into a single chip, SPMEM™ is highly durable, delivers a faster speed than flash memory, and doesn’t require a consistent power supply like DRAM.
In a statement announcing the closure of the Series D round, Petro Estakhri, founder and CEO of Avalanche Technology, said “This round of funding will enable Avalanche to deliver in production this extremely highly sought after memory technology. We are moving quickly toward delivering this ground-breaking patented technology ideally suited for high volume applications across a number of computing platforms to key customers we are currently working with.”
Estakhri added, “It’s a pleasure to welcome VTB Capital to the Avalanche team including our board of directors.”
MRAM chips as a market looks as though it may be ready to expand. In February, Boston-based Spin Transfer Technologies received $36m in Series A funding, led by private equity firm Allied Minds with participation from Invesco Asset Management, to develop a rival chip to Avalanche’s SPMEM™. Additionally, in 2011, Samsung Electronics bought US-based Grandis for $15m, a start-up that had been working on MRAM and related technologies for a decade.