News & Events

• China and Hong Kong...
  Omiino's VASSPs have continued to acquire momentum on the world market, especially in the shadow of current economic pressures on telecommunications companies to retain shareholder value
• Demand for Virtual...
  Omiino head west again this week. This time, Omiino’s CEO, Gary Hamilton, is visiting the greater Los Angeles area to meet with a number of interested Southern California telecommunications companies. He will also spend time a little further east, pro
• VASSP Solutions...
  With a significant proportion of the world’s telecommunications supply companies based in the San Jose region of California, it wasn’t going to be long before Omiino’s “Virtual ASSP” solution was winging its way to the region.
• All News & Events

Crescent Capital leads investment round in new semiconductor development firm

Belfast December 3rd, 2007... Crescent Capital, the Belfast, Northern Ireland based venture capital firm, today announced that it has led a seed-round investment in Omiino Ltd.  Omiino is developing a new generation of silicon for telecommunications network equipment vendors.  This new breed of semiconductor devices will allow telecommunications operators to rapidly introduce new revenue earning data solutions. 

Crescent has invested £750,000 ($1.5m) in the pre-development round.  The total round value was £1.05m ($2.1m) – with the balance of funds provided by the management team, private investors and bank funding under the small loans guarantee scheme.

According to Deirdre Terrins of Crescent Capital, "There is a shakeout occurring in the semiconductor market. So-called application-specific silicon requires vast up-front investment and verification costs.  For telecommunications network equipment vendors the return on investment is getting longer for such devices given the relatively low production volumes. Omiino has developed a means of offering much more flexible and attractive silicon solutions to equipment vendors by building their offerings on the most advanced programmable chips."

According to Gary Hamilton, Omiino's CEO, the telecommunications industry needs to look for other means of delivering future integrated circuits which deliver the new features and higher performance demanded by an increasingly networked society, but which are available faster, and crucially overcome the cost and flexibility barriers represented by current solutions.  "We're delighted that Crescent Capital has recognised that our team's experience in telecommunications and silicon design gives us a unique ability to tap into this significant market opportunity."

He continued, "Omiino develops unique FPGA-based silicon for telecommunications equipment vendors. We apply industry and silicon design understanding to create market defining industry-specific integrated circuits. We like to call it integrated intelligence.  With Crescent's support we will be able to start developing our initial product offerings and development road-map.  We're already in dialogue with several equipment vendors who have shown considerable interest in our product plans.  We're really looking forward to working with Deirdre and the rest of the Crescent team."