Funds to Fuel Company’s Growth and to Support Rapidly Expanding Global LTE Deployment Footprint
HOD HASHARON, Israel, July 1, 2013 — Altair Semiconductor, the world’s leading developer of high-performance, single-mode LTE chipsets, today announced that it has completed a $25 million round of funding from existing investors Bessemer, BRM, Giza, JVP and Pacific Technology.
Altair will use the capital to further strengthen its leadership position in the single-mode LTE market as well as to support high volume product deployments from its largest customers.
“As LTE networks reach coverage parity with 3G in key markets, carriers realize that removing 3G and adapting LTE-only is the most efficient way to significantly lower costs and increase mobile broadband attach rates,” said Oded Melamed, Co-Founder and CEO of Altair. “Our month over month increase in chip shipments is a testament to the widespread move towards LTE-only across the industry and we intend to use the funds to support our customers as they ramp high volume production and deploy their products in the field.”
The cost of integrating LTE-only is substantially lower than LTE+3G, minimizing the prohibitively high cost delta that exists today between basic Wi-Fi models and those with mobile broadband connectivity. The lower cost of integrating LTE-only connectivity is also a key factor in the enablement of widespread availability of cloud-connected devices in the consumer and machine to machine space, driving what is known as the “Internet of Everything.”
Altair has pioneered the introduction of cutting edge, low cost single-mode LTE chipsets and, since rolling out its first chipset in 2009, has achieved many industry-firsts, including the release of the first FDD/TDD chipset in the world, the first commercial LTE chipset to exceed 100Mbps and the first chipset to be certified by Verizon Wireless’ 4G chipset certification program.
To date, Altair’s products have been integrated into more than 100 different product models, including tablets, Ultrabooks, portable hotspots, USB dongles and routers, designed by more than 30 global customers.
About Altair Semiconductor
Altair Semiconductor is the world’s leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G semiconductors. Altair’s chipsets can be found in approximately 30 end-user devices – ranging from USB dongles to smartphones – built by its more than 15 customers across North America, Europe, China, India and Taiwan – making it one of the only TDD/FDD LTE chipset manufacturers in the world with commercially available products. Altair’s comprehensive product portfolio includes baseband processors, multi-band RF transceivers for both FDD and TDD bands, and a range of reference hardware and product level protocol stack software. Based on a novel, proprietary Software Defined Radio (SDR) processor, codenamed “O[2]P™”, Altair’s products are the smallest and most highly power optimized in the industry, offering an unmatched combination of flexibility and performance. For more information, visit the company’s website at altair-semi.com. Follow Altair on Twitter: @AltairSemi