Venture Capital Firms

VC Firms, August Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Morgenthaler Ventures Invest $22 Million in Series C Funding for Unity Semiconductor

Based in Sunnyvale, California, memory and data storage device manufacturer, Unity Semiconductor announced that it had received $22 million in series C funding from its three investors, August Capital, Lightspeed Venture Capital, and Morgenthaler Ventures along with a major hard disk drive (HDD) company which also invests in Unity Semiconductor on a regular basis.

Unity Semiconductor was founded by Darrell Rinerson in 2002, who served in executive positions in both Micron Technology and Advanced Micro Devices before founding the company. Unity Semiconductor is a company that designs, develops, and manufactures storage-class memory devices that are not volatile and has planned to design a memory device that can be the smallest die size and lowest cost per bit. The company’s product prototype is actually an innovative design that will change the memory non-movable storage device market by creating a small memory card that can hold up to 64 GB of data.

According to Darrell Rinerson, who besides the company’s founder also serves as the company’s chairman, CEO and president, this round of funding is a testament to the fact that the team at Unity is experienced and has a product that can upset the market and that the progress of its development is going exceptionally well. Proceeds from this funding will continue to complete the development of Unity’s CMOx, which is the company’s revolutionary nonvolatile memory technology.

As far as Andy Rappaport, general partner with August Capital, is concerned, NAND Flash technology is one of the most important technologies on the market today, but capabilities are limited. The novel technology that Unity Semiconductor has developed is not just a technology that is superior to NAND Flash technology, but moreover is a technology that can be compatible with new generations of technologies in the future.

CMOx is a nanotechnology that can beat NAND technology because of its small size and large memory capacity. Furthermore Unity Semiconductor has protected this technology with a rather impressive patent portfolio.

Founded in 1995, August Capital is a vc firm that was founded by veterans of the venture capital industry, Dave Marquardt and John Johnston. August Capital invests in companies in the tech industry, which have innovative and original technology and show to be excellent entrepreneurs. Some companies in August Capital’s portfolio include SeaGate, Luxtera, Iridigm, Cobalt Networks, Ubicom, and others. August Capital has $1.3 billion under its management.

Lightspeed Venture Partners is a vc firm that operates globally with offices in the United States, China, India, and Israel. The vc firm has more than $2 billion of committed capital under its management and for more than 20 years Lightspeed Venture Capital has funded over 150 companies. Some of the companies in Lightspeed Venture Capital’s portfolio include 99Bill, Aerohive, AMEK, Aptera, Aquantia, Avamar, Blue Nile, and others.

Morgenthaler Ventures is a relatively large vc firm that has over $3 billion under its management and is based in Menlo Park, California and also has offices in Boulder, Colorado and Boston, Massachusetts. Morgenthaler Ventures was founded in 1968 by a successful operating executive, David Morgenthaler. Some companies in Morganthaler Ventures also manage corporate buyouts and since its inception has founded over 300 companies.

For more information about Unity Semiconductor, click here.

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