Financing to Expand Engineering and Business Development Activities
3i and Amadeus Capital Partners have co-led a $7.75 million Series A round financing in Nujira Ltd, a Cambridge-based company developing advanced power amplifier technology for the wireless industry. Nujira has previously received seed funding, led by Amadeus and including Cambridge Gateway Fund, Cambridge Capital Group and the Cambridge Angels, all of whom participated in this Series A round.
Power amplifiers, which are in every cellphone and cellular base station, are essential building blocks for wireless communication networks and critical to the transmission of all wireless signals. Nujira has established itself as a key player in an industry currently undergoing fundamental change as a result of the increased use of sophisticated modulation schemes. Nujira’s high power High Accuracy Tracking (HAT) Modulators for WCDMA, CDMA2000 or WiMAX base stations enable infrastructure and handset OEMs to avoid the reduction in amplifier efficiency normally associated with use of these modulation formats.
“Nujira’s high power HAT technology for very high efficiency power amplifiers presents a compelling solution for 3G cellular base station OEMs,” stated Barak Maoz of Amadeus Capital Partners, who joins the board. “The company’s HAT Modulators are the cornerstone of OEMs’ attempts to achieve 30% – 50% power amplifier efficiency. These levels of performance offer significant cost savings for network operators and system integrators as they seek ways of reducing operating costs while expanding network capacity.”
Analysts anticipate the number of cellular base station units growing from 1.8 million in 2004 to 3.5 million in 2009, driven by 3G, continued increase in subscribers, base station upgrades and the need for increased cellular network capacity. Gabriel Brown, chief analyst with Unstrung, commented: “There are great opportunities for specialist RF subsystem players in the cellular base station market. In particular, there is huge potential for innovators who can significantly improve upon the efficiency of today’s power amplifiers.”
“Nujira has assembled an outstanding senior engineering and management team with a proven track record. The company is gaining great customer traction and is well positioned to become the market leader in this field,” said Stephen Lowery, 3i director. 3i’s Ian Lobley who joins the board, added: “Nujira has anticipated the need for efficiency in emerging wireless standards and, having demonstrated its technology to leading OEMs, is now entering into contracts. As data rates continue to increase and efficiency problems in infrastructure and power consumption and devices becomes more of an issue, Nujira’s technology offers a path to improved efficiency for manufacturers.”
Tim Haynes, CEO of Nujira added: “ We are very fortunate to have the support of such leading venture capital investors. Nujira has made tremendous technical and commercial progress to date. Our prototype products have gained great interest from customers, and the Series A investment will enable us further to build out our engineering and business development teams and take our products into pilot production.”
Nujira was advised by Taylor Wessing and the investors by Osborne Clarke.