Stepmind Snags €20MStepmind Snags €20M

Stepmind raises €20M in round of funding that included AGF Private Equity and Nam Tai Electronics

January 20, 2004

1 Min Read

PARIS -- Stepmind has just secured one of France's largest rounds of venture capital funding in the last year. This fabless microelectronics company, specialising in high speed wireless communications technologies, has concluded an investment round of EUR20 million with leading investors including AGF Private Equity and Nam Tai Electronics Inc., a Telecommunications and Consumer Electronics manufacturer listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE Symbol: NTE; CBOE Symbol QNA; Frankfurt Stock Exchange Symbol 884852).

Founded by Alain and Andre Jolivet in July 2000, Stepmind's ambition is to become a major player in the GSM/GPRS/EDGE and WLAN markets. Stepmind develops highly integrated chips which enable its customers to reduce the cost of their solutions.

After three years of development, the company is now commercialising a radio transceiver chip which will be the smallest and most integrated available in the market. "Furthermore, we anticipated by several years the acceptance of the EDGE standard as well as the emergence of WLAN in multimedia applications. The WiFi market is quickly moving from just PC-based networking to the emerging digital media and smart home markets. Our innovative components allow our customers to address markets enabling the transmission of music, pictures and video over high speed domestic wireless networks," said Alain Jolivet, Stepmind President and CEO.

Guillaume Lautour, Investment Director at AGF Private Equity, comments: "Stepmind gathers vision, great intellectual assets and exceptionally talented people; its products challenge industry leaders. We believe this company will create a lot of value on its markets."

Stepmind

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