Cavendish Kinetics adds Qualcomm as investor

SAN JOSE, USA: Cavendish Kinetics announced closing a $10 million financing round and the addition of Qualcomm Incorporated to the current investor group. Also participating in the round were Tallwood Venture Capital, Wellington Partners Venture Capital and several other current investors.

Cavendish Kinetics, a fabless semiconductor manufacturer, will use the funds to produce RF Tuning products based on its proprietary NanoMech technology. Initial products target antenna tuners and impedance matching devices in mobile devices and are expected to sample early in 2012.

Nagraj Kashyap, VP of Qualcomm Ventures, said: “Cavendish technology provides new standards of performance for RF circuits which is critically needed for the expanding frequency bands that future mobile devices will utilize. LTE, MIMO and high speed data traffic are all driving new RF requirements, and Cavendish’s tuning products are key to meeting size, performance and cost targets.”

Cavendish CEO, Dennis Yost, said: “We are very pleased that Qualcomm decided to invest after a very thorough evaluation of our company. Qualcomm is a technology leader in mobile technologies and their investment is a testament to our technology and business direction.”

Cavendish Kinetics’ Board of Directors also expanded to include RF industry veterans, Messrs. Paul Dal Santo and Moiz Beguwala. Dal Santo has over 30 years of semiconductor experience and was most recently COO of Silicon Image. The vast majority of Dal Santo’s career was with Motorola in Chicago where he started as an engineer working on the world’s first cellular telephone. This "startup group" inside of Motorola eventually became the most profitable part of Motorola and he served as VP of Engineering in several different roles, driving architectural technology decisions and managing several cellular product lines.

Dr. Beguwala presently serves as a director on the boards of Skyworks Solutions Inc and Powerwave Technologies Inc., and as chairman of the board at RF Nano. He retired from Conexant in 2002 and served as a consultant to the CEO until 2007. At Conexant, he served as a senior VP and GM of Wireless Communications Division from January 1999 to June 2002 and realized a three-fold increase in revenue from $160 million to $450 million under his leadership.

Chairman of the board of Cavendish Kinetics, Luiz Arzubi, said: “With the focus of Cavendish on mobile RF devices, our newest board members bring great depth and breadth of experience to the company. Both Paul and Moiz have been involved in the mobile RF market from its inception and will provide valuable strategic guidance to the management team.”