IRVINE, Calif., March 10 /PRNewswire/ -- WiSpry, Inc., the leader in programmable radio frequency (RF) semiconductor products for the wireless industry, today announced the closing of an additional $7 million of Series B financing, bringing the total of the Series B round to $18 million. The round was led by present WiSpry investors American River Ventures, Blueprint Ventures, and L-Capital Partners. The company also announced DoCoMo Capital has made a strategic investment in the company. Participating in the round was another new investor, Arkian, WiSpry's Korean sales representative, as well as existing investors, Hotung Capital Management, In-Q-Tel, and Shepherd Ventures.
WiSpry, a fabless RF semiconductor company, is developing highly-integrated, and cost-effective, programmable RF products for multi-band, multi-standard handsets including tunable antennas and, tunable impedance matching networks. The Company's RF product solutions are revolutionizing the architecture and capability of high volume wireless products. The key to WiSpry's technology is the integration of its patented tunable digital RF-MEMS capacitor devices in an industry standard RF-CMOS process flow, thereby enabling convergence of digital, analog, RF and MEMS functionality on a single chip.
"The addition of DoCoMo Capital in this round adds substantial validation to the value proposition that we are bringing to the wireless handset market," said Russ Garcia, WiSpry's president and CEO. "With the continuing growth in complexity of consumer-based wireless terminals the demand for digitally programmable RF continues to grow. The capability we are bringing to market with the tunable digital capacitor enables product solutions that significantly enhance performance in a cost effective manner, thereby bringing substantial value to both carriers and handset manufacturers."
"We look forward to our strategic relationship with WiSpry," said Mr. Nobuyuki Akimoto, president and CEO of DoCoMo Capital. "We believe that WiSpry's tunable RF product technology will be revolutionary for the wireless market place and will enable a new generation of mobile devices with better power efficiency, smaller form factor and superior RF performance that are able to seamlessly support multiple mobile communication standards and worldwide frequency bands."
This funding round will support the company's transition from technology development to product qualification. WiSpry has several other potential investors completing diligence and as such will keep this financing round open for an additional 60 days.
About DoCoMo Capital
Based in Palo Alto, California, DoCoMo Capital, Inc. is a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. (NYSE:DCM), the leading mobile communication company based in Japan. Working closely with NTT DoCoMo's business and R&D divisions, DoCoMo Capital is in charge of NTT DoCoMo's early to middle stage venture investments in mobile communications-related start-up companies predominantly in the United States.
DoCoMo Capital is committed to investing in and strategically backing applicable start-up companies in their early to middle product stages of development. That is, DoCoMo Capital focuses on evolving and advancing cutting-edge new technologies provided by its portfolio of start-up companies to promote growth and ultimately introducing them into NTT DoCoMo's future services and products. For more information, visit http://www.docomo-capital.com.
About WiSpry
WiSpry, headquartered in Irvine, Calif., designs and markets RF silicon integrated circuits, components and modules to radio frequency (RF) system manufacturers of mobile phones, laptops and mobile data communications products. Utilizing the Company's core competency in RF micro-electro-mechanical systems (RF-MEMS) technology, WiSpry creates revolutionary wireless products enabled by the cost-effective integration of RF-MEMS and advanced semiconductor circuitry to create 'System on Chip' MEMS-based RF architectures. WiSpry tunable RF-MEMS devices permit the development of reconfigurable RF front-ends and enable system designers to achieve the architectural innovation required to meet the growing challenges of mobile communications networks. For more information, visit http://www.wispry.com.
Source: WiSpry, Inc.
