Siano Raises $17.5M in Round C Funding To Expand its Leadership in Mobile TV Markets

Led by DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures – round included all existing investors

NETANYA, Israel — Leading mobile TV chip maker Siano Mobile Silicon, announced today that is has secured a third round of funding, of US $17.5 million. DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures (DFJTFV), the exclusive Israeli partner of the US based global venture capital – Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), led the round and was joined by all of the existing investors from previous rounds – JVP, Star Ventures, Walden Israel, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Inventec Appliances. Siano has now raised $52 million, in three rounds of funding.

The present financing round follows an eventful year for Siano, as the company expanded its footprint in the soaring Asian mobile TV market with the opening of offices in Korea and Japan, in addition to extensive activity in China that included the launch of its SMS1180 receiver chip, supporting the Chinese mobile TV technology that is currently making its debut at the Olympics Games. In addition, earlier in the year, Siano has continued to demonstrate its global technology leadership with notable design wins and the launch of its latest multi-standard chip, the SMS1130, which added the support of ISDB-T, the mobile TV broadcasting standard used in Japan and Brazil, to the mobile TV technologies supported already in previous products – DVB-T, DVB-H and T-DMB.

Eldad Tamir, co-founder and General Partner at DFJ-Tamir Fishman Ventures, commented: “We are thrilled to lead this round and invest in an outstanding company such as Siano. As a leading venture capital firm that keeps a constant eye out for noteworthy investment opportunities, we’ve been observing the mobile TV market and its ever-rising potential for some time now, and it quickly became clear to us that Siano is well positioned to become a true global industry leader.”

“The consumer market is now starting to fulfill the vision that gave birth to Siano back in 2004, namely that within just a few years, practically every single non-tethered consumer device with a color LCD would include digital TV function”, said Alon Ironi, CEO of Siano. “We are witnessing massive embedding of our products into a surprisingly wide range of devices, from mobile phones and notebooks to navigation devices, portable media players and even boom-boxes and digital photo frames.”

“The new capital will help Siano expand its sales and customer support facilities worldwide, build adequate silicon inventory to match the increasing demand for its products, and continue developing state-of-the-art solutions for the mobile TV market,” added Ironi.