14th Apr 2008 07:01
Imperial Innovations Group plc14 April 2008 Imperial Innovations Group plc ("Imperial Innovations") Investment in Spiral Gateway Ltd Imperial Innovations Group plc (AIM: IVO) today announces that it has investedin Spiral Gateway Ltd, alongside other investors Braveheart Investment Groupplc, Bank of Scotland Corporate and Scottish Enterprise's Scottish Co-investmentFund. The second funding round of £730,000 into Spiral Gateway is designed toprovide interim support for the company whilst it develops and advancesdiscussions with key commercial partners. Spiral Gateway was founded in 2004 as a spin-out from the University ofEdinburgh and is focused on the development of a computer processing platformknown as Reconfigurable Instruction Cell Architecture ('RICA'); a method forprocessing multimedia, wireless and broadband computing tasks. Spiral Gateway isaiming to incorporate the technology onto silicon chips and will initiallytarget the Image Signal Processing ('ISP') market. The ISP function is one whichis required in every camera enabled mobile phone. The investment in Spiral Gateway is an example of Imperial Innovations' strategyof considering certain seed stage companies and validating their commercialpotential by drawing upon Imperial College's expertise before investing in them.After conducting due diligence on Spiral Gateway with help from Dr Oskar Mencerin the Department of Computing at Imperial College, which has expertise in thearea of reconfigurable processors, Imperial Innovations made the investment witha view to increasing its financial support at the next major funding round. The management team includes highly experienced semiconductor professionalsincluding Graham Townsend, former CTO of Vision plc and ST's Imaging Division,Rick Chapman, founding executive of SuperH, together with Alan Henderson (SpiralGateway's Chairman) and Robert Swann, two of the team that took Alphamosaic fromconcept to a US$123m exit in 4 years. Susan Searle, Chief Executive Officer of Imperial Innovations said, "Imperial College's expertise is a great asset to us when making investmentdecisions for external opportunities such as Spiral Gateway Ltd. We are pleasedto be investing in a company which we believe to have great potential."Graham Townsend of Spiral Gateway said, "We are delighted to have Imperial Innovations involved in this funding round.Their team brings relevant experience of the technology marketplace and theirstrong links with Imperial College have already contributed to an improvedunderstanding of how our technology is differentiated in the wider field ofre-configurable processing." -Ends- For more information contact: Imperial InnovationsSusan Searle, Chief Executive Officer +44 (0)20 7594 6591Lucy Ahfong, Marketing Communications Executive +44 (0)20 7594 6644 M:CommunicationsPatrick d'Ancona / Eleanor Williamson +44 (0)20 7153 1539 JP Morgan Cazenove (NOMAD to Imperial Innovations)Steve Baldwin +44(0)20 7588 2828 Notes to Editors About Imperial Innovations Imperial Innovations is one of the UK's leading technology transfer andcommercialisation companies. The company was founded in 1986 and its ordinaryshares admitted to trading on the AIM Market of London Stock Exchange plc inJuly 2006, raising £25 million at an offer price of 365p and £1 million by meansof a public offer. In November 2007, the company raised a further £30 million bymeans of a placing of new ordinary shares with investors. The company's integrated approach encompasses the identification of ideas,protection of intellectual property, development and licensing of technology andformation, incubation and investment in technology businesses. A wide range oftechnologies are commercialised within the areas of healthcare, energy,environment and emerging technology trends. Based at Imperial College London, the company has established equity holdings in74 technology businesses and is managing 133 commercial agreements as of 31 July2007. Imperial Innovations also commercialises technologies originating fromoutside Imperial College through incubation contracts with the Carbon Trust andWRAP and has commercialisation contracts with a number of multinationalcorporations including BAE Systems. www.imperialinnovations.co.uk About Spiral Gateway Ltd Spiral Gateway is developing Image Signal Processing chips for the mobile phonemarket. The company was incorporated in 2004 and is a spin-out from theUniversity of Edinburgh. It is backed by a consortium of investors led byBraveheart Investment Group plc., the commercialisation and investmentmanagement company. www.spiralgateway.co.uk This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
Imperial Innovations Group