Two out of PicoChip’s three strategic investors have returned in the sixth round of funding for the UK-based semiconductor maker.
PicoChip raised $20m from its return investors, which included the corporate venturing divisions of technology companies Intel and Samsung but no public mention of US phone operator AT&T, which had previously invested in the company, beyond saying the round was "heavily oversubscribed". The company said it had now raised $110.5m in total.
Its other investors in the series F round were venture capital firms Atlas Venture, Highland Capital Partners, Pond Ventures, Rothschild Capital Management and Scottish Equity Partners.
The company was unavailable for comment on AT&T or about its flotation plans having said in November that the $20m raised at that time would be its last before an initial public offering.
However, PicoChip said it had sold more than one million chips and would achieve over 50% quarter-on-quarter sequential revenue growth in the three months to end-June.
In a statement, PicoChip said the growth in demand for the company’s products was driven by its picoXcell product used to power mobile data traffic.
Nigel Toon, chief executive of picoChip, said: "As we execute against our plan we have raised additional equity funding that will set the company on an even steeper growth curve."
The company said it had more than 25 customers, including Alcatel Lucent, Sagem, Ubiquisys and ip.access.
Industry analyst ABI said shipments of femtocell – PicoChip’s type of semiconductor – would exceed 40 million units by 2014.