Eileen Tanghal, vice-president of new business exploration and new business ventures at UK-listed chip designer ARM, is a businesswoman whose star has been rising for some time.
She was on Global Corporate Venturing’s Powerlist for 2015 for heading Applied Materials’ Applied Ventures unit, which invested nearly $200m in more than 50 deals over about seven years. Her deals at Applied Ventures included US-based Aventa Technologies’ $1m series A financing round in 2012, Australia-based BT Imaging’s $3.8m round in 2010. She also devised a deal for Netherlands-based Liquavista, which was acquired first by Samsung and later by Amazon. Tanghal also oversaw the sale of Fat Spaniel, which was acquired by Power-One.
While it took three years for her to be promoted to managing director at Applied Ventures, it took only three months for her role was expanded at ARM.
Having joined in January last year, Tanghal’s team is now pinpointing investments and acquisitions in new areas, which are then acted on by ARM’s corporate development team.
As she said: “I am actually not running a traditional corporate venture capital [CVC] group but more of a strategic investments and acquisitions group called New Business Ventures.”
She added: “We are not a typical CVC. We are more of a strategic business unit empowered to set direction and find target companies to acquire and invest in, such that we can create new revenue streams for ARM. I believe all CVCs should be enabled to do this.
“We have identified a new industry and space for potential acquisitions and have educated our executives so that we can execute our strategy next year.”
To help her, Tanghal said she had “brought together some great talent over the past year” to November, including Kris Inapurapu from technology investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Her team has also been setting up in China.
Tanghal is well suited to help the industry evolve, having been in corporate VC since 2008. Before Applied Materials, she worked as a financial VC for seven years at two UK-based firms. First at Amadeus Capital Partners, during which she completed her MBA from London Business School, and later at Kennet Partners.
She moved to the UK after taking her degree in electrical engineering and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and first job at PDF Solutions.
Once settled in the close-knit UK technology community, the ties she as built have been fruitful. While VCs had been her start in venture investing, Tanghal said she found her element in corporate venturing.
Initially, she said she had joined Applied Ventures for “the team and the topic – I joined CVC when cleantech was just heating up at Applied Materials”.
“I found I was well suited for the position because CVCs tend to be more focused on product strategy and fitting within a larger context, rather than just financial returns.“
ARM and the industry seem to agree with her analysis.