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12th May 1999

Cambridge Silicon Radio spins out of Cambridge Consultants with $10M backing

'Radio on a chip' company set to break the mould of radio design

Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) has been spun out of Cambridge Consultants Ltd (CCL) with $10M backing. Venture capitalists 3i, Amadeus Capital Partners and Gilde IT Fund have provided the investment to establish CSR, a new company focused on the single-chip short-range radio market. Cambridge Consultants Limited (CCL), the European technology and innovation arm of global consulting firm Arthur D. Little, will retain a shareholding in the new venture in exchange for certain intellectual property rights.

The founding team of James Collier, Phil O'Donovan and Glenn Collinson, with others from CCL, will build CSR as a 'fabless silicon supplier', designing and engineering integrated circuits, whilst subcontracting manufacture and test to silicon foundries in Europe and Asia.

CSR designs and brings to market single-chip short-range radios which allow wireless communication between a plethora of products including mobile 'phones PDAs and PCs. CSR will be the first company to offer a fully integrated 2.4GHz radio, baseband and microcontroller solution on one CMOS chip.

Howard Biddle, Cambridge Consultants' Chief Executive, said: "CSR is the latest in a long series of successful spin-offs that includes Xaar, Domino and Elmjet. The new initiative is a continuing demonstration of CCL's position as a leading-edge innovator. We are very excited about the new company and committed to a close and long-term relationship with it. We will co-operate closely to design revolutionary products for clients that exploit this new wireless standard."

James Collier, co-founder and Technical Director of Cambridge Silicon Radio commented: "CSR intends to break the mould of wireless system design. Our integrated circuits (ICs) have the highest level of integration, combining radio frequency, base-band and microprocessor functions on a single silicon chip. This cuts the cost of ownership of good quality digital radio by a factor of three. We will also be the first to use standard, CMOS processes for radio ICs. Our chips will allow customers and even whole industries that had not previously contemplated doing so to add radio communications to their products. Our chips will also guarantee type-approval and therefore allow our customers to roll out new products faster than their competition."

Phil O'Donovan, co-founder and Managing Director of Cambridge Silicon Radio, commented: "CSR is looking to take advantage of the phenomenal opportunities in the short-range radio market. The ability to connect numerous devices without wires can be applied to a whole host of applications, from cordless headsets for mobile 'phones to more innovative applications in the domestic environment, such as wireless light switches. Wirelessly enabled interactive toys will also become a major application area. The incredible interest in emerging standards such as Bluetooth is proof of the potential for short-range radio."

Glenn Collinson, co-founder and Marketing Director of Cambridge Silicon Radio, said: "The agreement between major players in the converging communications and computer industries on a short-range radio standard is enormously significant. This is the first time that a radio standard has been defined that allows mobile 'phones, hand-held computers and personal computers to communicate together wirelessly without manual intervention from the user. Bluetooth's ability to meet cost/performance needs for a whole raft of applications is another significant factor - it is much lower in cost than alternative wireless standards and will often also allow a lower cost replacement for cables and connectors, especially when installation and maintenance is taken into account."

Initially, CSR's key areas of investment will be in increasing the size of its design and engineering team, marketing the company and its products and establishing a presence in North America in early 2000 and subsequently in the Far East. Bluetooth is the codename for a technology specification for low-cost, short-range radio links between mobile PCs, mobile 'phones and other portable devices. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group is an industry group - consisting of Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba - that is driving the specification and roll-out of the technology.

Although Bluetooth will be the company's principle focus for its first year, CSR has also developed its own proprietary protocols for application in the industrial and medical market sectors which will provide lower cost alternatives to Bluetooth and will enable much longer battery lifetimes. CSR will also develop higher data-rate products when these are needed and will apply its expertise to other non-Bluetooth applications.

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