AI-driven analog design to accelerate chip innovation
Agile Analog, a Cambridge analog IP company, announces it has closed its latest Pre-A funding round with Delin Ventures, firstminute Capital and MMC Ventures for $5M.
Founded in 2017, Agile Analog will use the funding to expand the existing engineering team in Cambridge and deliver analog IP products to a wide range of waiting customers. Agile Analog’s unique AI-driven platform replaces the existing manual design process that has not fundamentally changed in 60 years.
With the explosion of the Internet of Things (IoT), AI, autonomous vehicles, the next generation of telecoms and newer smaller process nodes, the demand for new chip designs has never been greater. Analog circuits are needed on every chip to interface between the real world and the digital world. From sensors to battery connections to data transmission, analog components are the hidden driving force behind our modern digital lives. Analog design, which is slow and manual is often the key bottleneck in chip design. Agile Analog’s innovative solution removes this bottleneck, giving customers exactly the type of component they want, on exactly the right semiconductor process, with industry leading quality. This enables Agile Analog’s customers to accelerate the pace of chip innovation and provide smaller, cheaper, more reliable and lower power solutions.
By removing the restrictive manual process, Agile Analog provides access to flexible and easy to use analog IP, enabling a broad range of customers to incorporate more analog onto their chips and significantly reducing the size and cost of end products. Agile Analog technology enables a move away from simple analog designs compensated by complex digital designs to a more balanced mix of technologies, bringing more reliable, lower power designs to market quicker.
Tim Ramsdale, CEO for Agile Analog said;
“I’m delighted with the confidence that our investors have placed in us. This investment will enable us to deliver to our customers faster and make possible a paradigm shift in the $2Bn analog IP market.”
Jonathan Hay, Partner at Delin Ventures, said;
“We are impressed with the team’s vision to transform analog design and reinvigorate the use of analog. Analog design is the backwater of the semiconductor industry and we think Agile Analog can change that. The team has the world-leading experience and industry connectivity to deliver on this vision. That was a key part of our decision to follow on with our Seed investment.”
Brent Hoberman, Co-founder at firstminute Capital, said;
“The Agile Analog founding team is an exceptional balance between deep tech and commercial experience. Predominantly made up of ex-ARM domain experts and division heads, they are industry veterans with a strong network as well as technical expertise.”
Camilla Mazzolini, Investor at firstminute Capital, said;
“Following extensive due diligence from industry experts, it was clear to FMC that the company’s technology and approach have the potential to disrupt and transform the industry from a labor-intensive, manual and costly process to an automatic, cheaper, quicker and more accurate on.”
Mina Samaan, Investment Manager at MMC Ventures, said;
“Agile Analog’s technology has the potential to become the industry standard for analog IP. We’re excited to back Tim, Mike and the rest of the team as they continue to bring innovation to an industry which is ripe for disruption.”
Delin Ventures > is London based private technology focused investment firm founded by the serial entrepreneur, Igor Linshits. Delin invests in early stage U.K. technology businesses. Delin’s current portfolio includes import.io, Fluidic Analytics, AimBrain, the Plum Guide, and Vidsy, as well as a number of other seed stage investments. Delin has also invested in funds managed by Local Globe, IQ Capital, Entrepreneur First, Stride.vc and o2h Ventures. Delin Ventures is part of the Delin Group which also includes Delin Capital Asset Management, a leading investor and developer of logistics real estate.
Firstminute Capital > is a $100m pan-European seed fund founded by Brent Hoberman and Spencer Crawley that launched in June 2017 to support the next wave of early stage European technology entrepreneurs. The fund, which counts the London-based venture fund Atomico, the Chinese technology giant Tencent and the European FMCG conglomerate Henkel as institutional investors, along with 30 founders of billion dollar technology businesses, invests across Europe, and opportunistically in the US and Israel. Firstminute capital has a sector agnostic remit within tech, with a particular interest in SaaS, DeepTech, vertical AI, Healthtech, Blockchain, Cyber, Gaming and D2C.
MMC Ventures > is a research-led venture capital firm that has backed over 60 early-stage, high-growth technology companies since 2000. MMC’s dedicated research function provides the Firm with a deep and differentiated understanding of emerging technologies and sector dynamics, to identify attractive investment opportunities. MMC’s research team also supports early stage companies through the life of MMC’s investment. MMC helps to catalyse the growth of enterprise software and consumer internet companies that have the potential to disrupt large markets. The Firm has one of the largest software-as-a-service (SaaS) portfolios in Europe, with recent exits including CloudSense, Invenias and NewVoiceMedia. MMC’s dynamic consumer portfolio includes several of the UK’s favourite companies, including Bloom & Wild, Gousto and Interactive Investor.
Explore MMC’s cutting-edge research at mmcventures.com, MMC Writes and @MMC_Ventures.
Agile Analog is a VC funded start-up which has brought together industry veterans from the analog, IP and design automation worlds to revolutionize the way analog IP is developed and delivered. Based in Cambridge (UK), we are growing quickly to become one of the world’s leading analog IP companies. Using our innovative core technology, we are able to design analog circuits faster, to a higher quality, and on any semiconductor process. We are widening market access to analog IP in a way that will greatly increase our customers' opportunities to take innovative chip designs to market. As part of a dynamic industry, we are disrupting methodologies that have been unchanged for generations.
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