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Active Investments
Fulcrum Microsystems
Date Invested - March 20, 2000
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Fulcrum Microsystems (formerly Asynchronous Digital
Design) is a 50-person semiconductor start-up located in Calabasas
Hills, California. The company is focused on delivering high-performance
and power-efficient silicon solutions for emerging multi-processor
applications. They pioneered and have begun leveraging a patented
circuit design methodology that enables them to deliver semiconductors
that possess a number of unique characteristics as compared to high-performance
ASICs, including:
- Self-timed circuits with Gigahertz performance (4x ASICs)
- System-level integration (3x ASICs)
- Low power consumption (50% less than ASICs)
Unlike synchronous logic and other asynchronous design styles,
their delay-insensitive asynchronous circuits do not glitch, do
not have race conditions, and do not use a system clock to control
the flow of data through logic. These properties provide significant
and sustainable advantages over all other known VLSI design methodologies.
And, it's proven. Team members designed and fabricated several delay-insensitive
asynchronous chips while at Caltech, including an FIR filter in
1995 and a MIPS32 instruction set-compatible processor in 1998.
Since then, the company has fabricated and characterized several
complex devices, each validating critical components of their system-on-a-chip
framework. The most recent device was fabricated in a commercial
130nm process and operates at over 1.4GHz. The device contains a
system-on-a-chip interconnect that provides 800Gbps of switching
capacity. Fulcrum plans to announce major development partnerships
and begin shipping its first commercial chip in 2003. For more information
about Fulcrum Microsystems and its products, please visit them at
www.fulcrummicro.com.
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Eidogen, Inc.
Date Invested - October 25, 2000
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Eidogen, Inc (formerly Bionomix) is a Pasadena, California
based biotechnology company committed to delivering computational
drug discovery platforms designed to overcome the new challenges facing
drug discovery organizations in the post-genomic era. The last decade
has seen the revolutionary human genome project transform the way
our industry identifies drug targets. In the coming decade, an equally
important revolution in the fields of structural biology and protein
informatics will transform the way our industry performs target prioritization,
lead identification, and lead optimization. Eidogen was established
to lead this revolution. For more information on Eidogen, please visit
www.eidogen.com. |
Syagen Technology, Inc.
Date Invested-September 28, 2001
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Syagen Technology, Inc. is a bioanalytical instrumentation
company located in Tustin, California. Syagen is rapidly commercializing
technology for high throughput molecular analysis based on mass
spectrometry. The technology is covered by several patents held
by the company. Syagen has developed innovative products lines for
the biopharmaceutical, aviation security, and chemical/biological
threat security markets. Syagen has customers and revenues, and
has significant strategic relationships with major instrument manufacturers.
The company also was named to the Deloitte & Touche Fast 50,
reflecting the fastest growing technology companies in Southern
California. For more information about Syagen Technology, please
visit them at www.syagen.com |
Systine Inc.
Date Invested - June 21, 2001
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Systine is commercializing a breakthrough technology (Low Energy
Electron Enhanced Etching – LE4) for plasma dry etching of
semiconductor chips. LE4 provides atomically smooth etched surfaces
and sidewalls at length scales ranging from millimeters to 20 nanometers,
without causing ion bombardment damage, the main problem with all
dry plasma etching methods. LE4 is the only technology that etches
with lighter electrons instead of the heavy ions in use currently.
Systine will design, manufacture, sell and service this semiconductor
front end processing equipment to a variety of customers. In the
early stage, the customers are compound semiconductor chip manufacturers
(using Gallium Arsenide, Gallium Nitride and Indium Phosphide) such
as TRW, Conexant, Agilent, AXT, Nitronex, etc. In the next stage,
Systine will sell equipment to silicon based chip manufacturers
like Intel, IBM, and Motorola.
Systine has a working 3” prototype with manual load lock and
sample stage. Systine is currently etching custom chips for potential
beta customers in preparation for early sales of R&D machines
to these customers.
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Realized Investments
SDL Acquires Language Weaver, Affirming its Leadership in Machine Translation and Global Information Management.
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July 15, 2010 - SDL, the leading provider of Global Information Management solutions, today announces it has signed an agreement to acquire Language Weaver Inc. ("Language Weaver"), a pioneer in statistical machine translation. This acquisition not only delivers best-of-breed automated translation technology into SDL's Global Information Management Platform, it does much more. Integration of secure machine translation technology into the translation supply chain at all levels will allow enterprises and governments to translate significantly larger volumes of content faster and more efficiently to meet the needs of the vast content in today's increasingly online world. The transaction has received shareholder approval of more than 85% of Language Weaver equity ownership.
SDL is acquiring Language Weaver for a consideration of US$42.5 million (£28.2 million) in cash, subject to adjustments for closing working capital and cash positions, with target cash in the business of US$4m.
Language Weaver's machine translation technology puts SDL firmly in place for ensuring the effective provision of secure multilingual content into the future's digital age. The two companies have joint customers, such as Adobe, Dell, Intel and Siemens and have tightly integrated their products to support both high-quality machine translation stand alone, as in combination with human translation. Language Weaver's customer base includes enterprises such as TripAdvisor, who use the technology to provide instant translations of community reviews of hotels and restaurants. Language Weaver's portfolio also includes government agencies around the world.
Language Weaver is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, and operates in the United States, Europe and Japan, employing 96 staff. The company works closely with the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California, a leading research institute for machine translation, to further research and enhance statistical machine translation methods through the combined parties scientists.
For more information on the acquisition please visit www.sdl.com/languageweaver
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