Smooth-Stone, a US-based developer of semiconductors for computer servers, has raised $48m in its series A round from a consortium of strategic and venture capital investors.
The syndicate included UK-listed chip licensing company ARM; Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), an Abu Dhabi-state backed investment fund for the semiconductor industry; chip maker Texas Instruments; and VCs Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners and Highland Capital Partners.
Smooth-Stone will license ARM’s low-power mobile phone chip technology to build servers and data centres that usually use peer Intel’s products. Barry Evans, chief executive of Smooth-Stone, said: "Our goal is to completely remove power consumption as an issue for the data centre."
Bruce Beckloff, vice president of corporate business development at ARM, by email said: " We provided the initial seed funding combined with some Texas [state] government funding in early 2009. ARM has been working with Smooth-Stone since then to develop the product and find further funding.
"The challenge now is no financial VCs invest in early stage semiconductor start-ups. We (Smooth-Stone and ARM) had to work very hard to put the syndicate together, but the outcome of the effort has been tremendous."
Tom Lantzsch, executive vice president of corporate development at ARM, has been on Smooth’s board along with Evans and independent director Howard Bubb, a former executive at Intel and chief executive of fabless chip company Ambric, and has been joined by Daniel Durn, executive director at ATIC, and three partners from the VCs.