Crocus secures series D funding

A new private investor, Industrial Investors, joined the round led by Idinvest Partners. Major investors Sofinnova Ventures, Innovation Capital, Nanodimension and Ventech participated, underscoring seven years’ support. Rusnano also took part. The new funding enables Crocus to:

• Significantly ramp up manufacturing at TowerJazz Semiconductors
• Qualify its jointly owned fab, Crocus Nano Electronics, and release the first engineering wafers during the summer
• Together with its partner IBM, accelerate the development of Generation 3 technology for Crocus’ secure microcontrollers. These secure microcontrollers will target primarily high-end smart cards, a market that reached 7.9 billion units in 2012 (ABI Research, May 2013). Crocus is positioning to capture 30 per cent of this market by bringing smart card makers new enhanced-performance features at lower cost.
• Launch a magnetic sensor product line, which leverages the same Magnetic Logic Unit(TM) (MLU) manufacturing platform technology, in a market expected to reach the USD 2 billion per year mark in the near term.

“Crocus is now fully funded to deliver on the last key milestone in the industrial processing of its now mature Magnetic Logic Unit technology,” said Bertrand Cambou, CEO and executive chairman of Crocus Technology. “The commitment from our impressive group of investors along with the validation of our technology by strategic customers put us in a good position to prepare for product revenue around the end of this year. Combined with our steadily growing licensing and services business, we anticipate reaching cash flow break-even point by the end of next year." Crocus has pioneered the development of Magnetic Logic Unit (MLU), a CMOS-based rugged technology. MLUs bring important new advantages in speed, performance and security at lower cost to a range of next-generation electronics. It brings high sensitivity, low-noise, high temperature performance to magnetic sensors. Pinot de Villechenon and Associes acted as legal advisors to Crocus for the EUR 34 million funding.