Zenverge closes $30 million series C financing Led by Battery Ventures

CUPERTINO, USA: Zenverge, Inc., a leading developer of Advanced Media ICs, has closed a $30 million Series C round of financing led by Battery Ventures.

The company will use this round to ramp production and expand marketing and development activities to maintain its dramatic competitive advantage and broaden product offerings.

Existing investors, DCM, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), and Motorola Ventures joined Battery Ventures in this round. Zenverge also announced today the appointment of Mr. Ken Lawler, general partner at Battery Ventures, to its board of directors.

Based on the Zenverge Entertainment Nexus (ZEN), a groundbreaking new architecture for HD media convergence, the ZN200 and ZN100 product classes represent industry-leading video quality and performance for media transcoding, encoding and decoding at the lowest system cost.

Both classes of products are now shipping to select tier-one consumer electronics and operator equipment manufacturers worldwide, enabling them to provide consumers higher quality, universal access to all sources of content. Devices being powered by Zenverge products include HDTVs, Blu-ray recorders, set-top boxes, multimedia NAS devices, portable device adapters, PCs and network video equipment.

“We’re seeing great excitement around our ICs and the products into which they are designed. Digital media is being produced and consumed on more devices and at higher quality than ever before and we’re at the heart of it all. This funding gives us the financial strength to support the explosive growth we anticipate over the coming months,” said Zenverge CEO, Amir Mobini.

“Battery’s strong semiconductor track record and synergistic portfolio will be of great value to Zenverge at this stage of our growth, and we welcome Ken to our board. Battery’s participation in MaxLinear, the first US, venture-backed semiconductor company founded since 2002 to go public, is a great testament to the firm’s value in our space.”

”We’ve been long-time semiconductor investors, and remain bullish where many others have backed off,” said Ken Lawler, general partner, Battery Ventures.

“Although bullish, we are very selective in our investments. But when you see a team and technology like Zenverge, you jump at it. Their architecture addresses the problems at the heart of video applications – storage and reformatting – giving consumers anytime, any device access to video content. This is a team that knows each other well, has highly defensible technology and major design wins under its belt. We look forward to supporting them as they continue to carve out a leadership role in the market.”

“We are excited to be working with our new investment partner Battery Ventures,” said DCM general partner, Carl Amdahl. “With this new infusion of capital, Zenverge has the means to aggressively pursue leadership in video transcoding, a market that only continues to grow as consumers produce and view more video content on many more types of devices and formats.”

“Zenverge’s ability to raise $30 million in this challenging semiconductor venture market is a testament to the quality of the team and the efficacy of the products in the market. We look forward to working with management and the other investors to build the leading media IC company in the industry,” said Robert Abbott, general partner, Norwest Venture Partners.

"We are witnessing the explosive growth of video content on the one hand and new device categories for consuming video on the other hand," said Reese Schroeder, managing director, Motorola Ventures. "Motorola has been at the forefront of this video revolution by working with content partners and operators to deliver this content to revolutionary new devices across networks. There is an opportunity for Zenverge's technology to facilitate the video transformation that occurs at various points from video creation to initial delivery to enabling media mobility."