Japan-based flash memory intellectual property (IP) producer Floadia completed a ¥1.2bn ($11.4m) series C round yesterday, closing a second tranche led by advanced materials and healthcare group Teijin.
Marubeni Ventures and NEC Capital Solutions, corporate venturing units for conglomerate Marubeni and IT services firm NEC Corporation respectively, filled out the ¥510m second close, investing alongside venture capital fund Idaten Ventures and Miyako Capital, an investment vehicle for Kyoto University.
The company had reached a ¥530m first close for the round in 2019 that was led by TEL Venture Capital, a subsidiary of semiconductor production equipment manufacturer Tokyo Electron, in addition to ¥180m of debt financing from Japan Finance Corporation.
Founded in 2011, Floadia designs embedded non-volatile memory chips which allow a computer or another device to recover information and data after being rebooted. It will use the funding to expand its embedded memory IP and come up with new semiconductor devices with higher processing power.
TEL Venture Capital helped Floadia close a $14.1m series B round in 2017 alongside Chih-Hung Investment, Daiwa Corporate Investment, Fortune Venture Capital, SBI Investment and Innovations and Future Creation, which invested on behalf of fabless silicon technology provider Faraday Technology Corporation, brokerage Daiwa Securities, semiconductor foundry UMC, financial services firm SBI Holdings and Tokyo Institute of Technology.
The 2017 round included Golden Asia Fund Ventures, a joint venture between financial services group Mitsubishi UFJ and the Taiwan state-owned Industrial Technology Investment Corporation; Real Tech Fund, a fund run by microalgae producer Euglena and financial services group SMBC; and Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ).
INCJ and Daiwa Corporate Investment had preiously contributed to a $6.4m round for the company in 2015 together with Mitsubishi UFJ subsidiary Mitsubishi UFJ Capital.
