Cavendish Kinetics of San Jose CA, USA, which provides RF MEMS tuning solutions for mobile and wearable wireless devices, has closed a $7m funding round, co-led by Tallwood Venture Capital and Wellington Partners, with participation from Qualcomm Ventures and other existing investors. The firm has also appointed Gilles Delfassy to its board of directors.
The funding will be used to support Cavendish’s growing number of customer design wins, following its first commercial product launch earlier this year. The nubia Z7 LTE smartphone for China Mobile uses Cavendish’s RF MEMS tuner to exceed China Mobile’s radio performance requirements for the 2GHz LTE frequency bands.
“The explosive growth of smartphones and wireless network traffic is driving the use of additional spectrum, which traditional smartphones cannot support efficiently,” says CEO Paul Dal Santo. “Cavendish’s innovative RF MEMS solutions are dramatically improving smartphone connection speed and battery life over the entire LTE spectrum, resolving this conundrum,” he claims. “The continued support of our investors and the addition of industry veteran Gilles Delfassy to our board is a strong endorsement of our roadmap and achievements thus far.”
Delfassy began his career in the semiconductor and mobile/wireless industry with Texas Instruments, where he created and built the firm’s wireless business. He has also served as president & CEO of Anadigics and ST-Ericsson.
“The wireless industry is beginning to push for better radio performance,” comments Delfassy. “Cavendish solutions have the potential to disrupt the LTE RF component market by significantly improving signal strength, data throughput and battery life of mobile devices,” he believes.
