SEP leads investment in fabless semiconductor company

SEP has led the successful completion of a $12 million first round of funding for Virtensys, a fabless semiconductor company which has developed innovative solutions to improve the utilisation and performance of IT systems.

SEP invested jointly in the company alongside Celtic House Venture Partners and GIMV. Virtensys, which has its headquarters and engineering operations in Manchester and sales and marketing offices in Silicon Valley, will use the funds to develop its team, complete project development and generate initial revenues.

Virtensys’ technology allows system developers to build data centres that can adapt instantaneously to any workload, self-configure and self-heal in event of failures, and operate at significantly higher utilisations than other existing systems.
“There are major challenges facing the IT industry today trying to balance the conflicting needs of limited IT budget growth while reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) and improving the systems utilization and performance," said Stuart Paterson, a Director in SEP’s Information Technology group. "Semiconductor vendors like VirtenSys are increasingly responsible for delivering cutting-edge semiconductor solutions which OEMs rely upon to meet those needs," he added.

SEP has considerable experience in the semiconductor sector. It backed Bluetooth specialist CSR, leading the last round of funding immediately before the company’s hugely successful flotation. It also invested in Wolfson Microelectronics at an early stage and realised a strong return when the company floated on the London Stock Exchange.