Cork electronics firm Powervation raises US$7m in venture investment

5 Dec 2012

Powervation, a Cork-based pioneer in digital power IC solutions, has just raised US$7m in Series C funding to fuel its business growth and accelerate market adoption of its technology.

New investor Nasdaq-listed Semtech Corporation, a leading supplier of mixed signal semiconductors, has made a strategic investment in the company, joining the round participation of the existing investor group – Intel Capital, SEP, VentureTech Alliance and Braemar Energy Ventures.

The funding will enable Powervation to accelerate business growth, expand sales channels and strengthen applications engineering, including establishing a new facility in Taiwan to support its Asian business growth. 

Enterprise Ireland joined the funding round with an R&D investment which will enable Powervation to further strengthen its design team in Cork to accelerate new product development.

Strong beachhead in comms and server markets

Powervation’s digital power controllers have established a strong beachhead in the communications and server/computing infrastructure market through their advanced digital control, telemetry and power management capabilities.

Its Intelligent Digital Power platform incorporates its patented Auto-Control technology, performing under all load conditions and over the full product lifecycle.

This brings key benefits in terms of system performance and efficiency coupled with breakthrough programmability, flexibility and time-to-market as supported by Powervation’s intuitive GUI-based design tool PowerSMART.  

“We are delighted by the strong backing of our investor group and to have Semtech Corporation on board as a strategic investor, as they are a market leader in silicon solutions for the high-performance communications and computing markets,” Mike McAuliffe, CEO of Powervation, explained.

“These investments endorse our progress with key customers and our business potential as we deliver the unique benefits of our Intelligent Digital Power platform to the wider market.

“We have strong momentum in the communication and module spaces and are excited by the early adoption of our new PV3201 Intel VR12.x DDR controller series by leading Server/Computing OEMs.

“This funding round will help fuel that market momentum and enable us to accelerate our commercial build-out as a company,” McAuliffe added.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com