Agile Analog closes new funding round to go global with revolutionary analog IP technology

New investment enables Cambridge-based Agile Analog to expand its engineering and commercial footprint in Asia and North America

CAMBRIDGE, England, May 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Agile Analog, a supplier of highly configurable process node agnostic analog IP building blocks, today announced that it closed a US$19m funding round led by OMERS Ventures, a transatlantic multi-stage investor in growth-oriented, disruptive technology companies, and backed by existing investors Delin Ventures, firstminute capital, and MMC Ventures.

The scale of the investment will allow Agile Analog to dramatically expand its technology offering and sales footprint, and is an endorsement of the disruptive potential of the company's process for generating configurable analog IP.

Driven by a mission to provide 'Analog IP the way you want it', Agile Analog makes it possible for ASIC or SoC manufacturers to configure analog IP to perfectly fit their application and chosen silicon process – a marked contrast with existing offerings, which require the customer to mould their chip design to fit a limited range of one-size-fits-all, standard analog IP products.

The new financial support recognises the potential for Agile Analog to take a large share of the existing analog IP market and to increase the availability, range and quality of analog IP to expand the total market size to $4bn by 2025.

Henry Gladwyn, Partner at OMERS Ventures, said: "What excites us about Agile Analog is the potential for scale. Every other analog IP supplier is restricted to selling a limited range of standard IP products. But because Agile Analog's unique technology enables it to create the IP that the customer wants, it can satisfy a wider range of customer requirements, and integrate more functionality into a chip design. As a result, the company is not limited by the size of today's analog IP market – Agile Analog's addressable market is potentially as big as the analog chip market. That is a huge opportunity which OMERS Ventures is pleased to help Agile Analog explore."

Major recruitment drive

Agile Analog will use the funding to accelerate the growth of its commercial and engineering support teams. In particular, Agile Analog will immediately move to expand its team in North America, and open a Taiwan office for sales and application engineering staff serving the Asian market. The company has also begun recruiting development engineers to be based at its Cambridge, UK headquarters and across Europe. It plans to double its headcount growing to over 100 people over the next 12 months.

Part of the funding will be used for technology development, to further enhance process support, and increase the range of analog IP supported. Agile Analog IP is already compatible with almost all analog CMOS processes, including advanced FINFET processes, and will expand the number of foundries supported. IP currently supported includes security, data conversion, power management, audio, signal processing and timing, and this functional coverage will be extended to satisfy increased customer demands.

Agile Analog's technology is well placed to remove critical bottlenecks in the semiconductor industry supply chain.

Pete Hutton, executive chairman of Agile Analog, said the backing of specialist technology investors was a welcome endorsement of the company's unique IP technology. He said: "The first chapter in Agile Analog's story was about developing an automated process for generating high quality configurable analog IP which can be verified at every stage up to right-first-time tape-out.

"This successful funding round marks the start of the next chapter: the technology and process are proven with a range of customers from OEMs to Tier 1 semiconductor companies. So now it's time to enable all semiconductor companies and the increasing number of OEMs who are designing their own silicon. Everyone is looking to shorten development cycles, increase integration, improve die area utilization and enhance system performance. By configuring analog IP the way the customer wants it and on any process node, we can enable them to gain all these benefits. With the funding to expand our engineering and commercial teams, we can now support a greater number of customers across a wider geographical footprint."

About Agile Analog

Analog IP needs to be different for each design. That is why Agile Analog has made a new way of doing things, conceived by some of the best minds in the industry. We provide a wide range of analog IP that is customised to your needs quickly, to a higher quality, and on any semiconductor process. Contact us at www.agileanalog.com to find out more.

About OMERS and OMERS Ventures

Founded in 1962, OMERS is one of Canada's largest defined benefit pension plans, with CAD$105 billion in net assets as at December 31, 2020. OMERS teams work in Toronto, London, New York, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Singapore, Sydney and other major cities across North America and Europe – serving members and employers and originating and managing a diversified portfolio of high-quality investments in public markets, private equity, infrastructure and real estate.

OMERS Ventures currently manages CAD$2 billion and has made more than 50 investments in disruptive technology companies across North America and Europe. www.omersventures.com.

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