October 07, 2019 by Luke James
The investment by both new and existing investors which will be used to expand Kandou's interconnect devices brings the company's total funding to near $100 million.
Kandou Bus S.A., a Swiss chip manufacturer founded in 2011, has recently secured $56 million in Series C funding that is expected to go towards the development and deployment of its high speed, low power interconnect devices product offering.
The company is a global leader in connectivity IP and chip solutions. The latest round of investments was delivered through a mix of institutional, strategic, and existing private investors, bringing the total investment the company has received close to $100 million.
In an interview with Venture Kick, Kandou said their mission is to reduce power consumption and increase the speed of electronic devices through their technology that is protected to the tune of over 300 patents.
Kandou was founded in 2011 and secured its Series A funding in 2012 and its Series B funding in 2016.
According to Kandou's Founder and CEO, Amin Shokrollahi, “High speed connectivity inside and between devices is one of the biggest challenges the electronics industry is facing. We appreciate the confidence that our investors have shown in our ability to innovate, build, and deliver world-class solutions to this challenge…. We are rapidly expanding our IP footprint in the industry, and we will soon be shipping our first chips designed for the upcoming generation of USB interconnect in consumer devices. This round of funding ensures that we deliver.”
Low power consumption chip connectors. Image from Kandou Bus S.A. via startup.ch.
Kandou's investors have high hopes for where their money is going. Felda Hardymon, a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, said, “Kandou continues to demonstrate and deliver industry leading technologies that provide a path for enhanced electronic products for several generations. We are excited to see Kandou’s innovations come to the market.”
Similarly, Frederic Wohlwend, Managing Director at Forestay Capital, said, “Creating power efficient, high speed chip-to-chip communication solutions is the mainstay for Kandou. Their disruptive technology and unique approach to solving interconnect issues, along with their track record of product execution, presented a compelling reason for us to invest.”
Kandou designs high speed, energy, and pin efficient serial links that connect IC components. Serial links account for a huge chunk of energy consumption in electronic devices, often representing an energy and speed bottleneck, which means that even the most marginal improvement in their design leads directly to better, faster, and more efficient consumer, commercial, and industrial electronic devices.
Kandou's technology is based on its own line of chip interconnect technologies (patent pending) that lead to a two-to-four-times improvement in speed at one-half to one-fifth of the power consumption. To achieve this, Kandou's technology uses a new transmission mode on serial links to transmit more bits on existing connectors.
Representing several years' worth of research in discrete mathematics, circuit design, and high-speed algorithm design, their technology is based on hundreds of patents.
Kandou's high speed, low power technology is ideal for reducing power and increasing speed in any device with chip-to-chip connections. This, of course, includes several consumer devices such as smartphones, laptops, digital cameras, routers, and game consoles.
