Dublin-based chip design company Decawave is to be acquired by the US Nasdaq-listed radio frequency firm Qorvo. The deal is understood to value the Irish business at $400m (€362m), making it the biggest ever sale of an Irish technology startup.
The price has not been confirmed by either party, but Qorvo’s chief financial officer, Mark Murphy, said that it was an all-cash deal that was part of a $500m cumulative outlay on Decawave and a US-based firm, Custom MMIC.
Decawave was founded in Dublin in 2007 by CEO Ciaran Connell and CTO Michael McLaughlin.
It has previously raised €56m in funding, mostly through venture capital firms such as lead investor Atlantic Bridge, ACT Venture Capital and Summit Bridge. The business has 85 employees.
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Decawave’s technology, an advanced version of ‘ultra wideband’ (UWB), is highly prized in a market switching to 5G, cloud technology and the ‘internet of things’.
While gadgets with GPS location technology need to see the sky to work properly, ultrawideband technology can be used to pinpoint the location of something indoors.
This makes it valuable for a whole range of purposes, from shopping centres and cars to small tracker tiles for keys and mobiles.
“Adding Decawave establishes our position in the emerging market for ultra-accurate, ultra-secure short-range location solutions,” said Bob Bruggeworth, CEO of Qorvo.
Apple has recently started to incorporate the technology in its own U1 chip, included in the iPhone 11.
“The Apple adoption of the UWB technology developed by Michael McLaughlin, Decawave’s CTO, was pivotal,” said David Moloney, co-founder of Movidius, an Irish semiconductor design firm which was acquired by Intel for over €300m in 2016.
Decawave, which describes itself as a “fabless semi-conductor company specialising in precise location and connectivity applications”, has previously clarified that Apple’s U1 chip is different to the firm’s but is interoperable with its technology.
“We are thrilled to announce the acquisition of Decawave by Qorvo,” said co-founder and CEO Mr Connell.
“We have created an incredibly unique technology, but we understand that to embrace the opportunity in front of us, we will need greater resources to execute at scale, accelerate our innovation and product launches and to continue to support our growing customer base with the same level of service.
“Qorvo’s expertise in RF technology and in serving very high-volume markets was a perfect combination to accelerate the adoption of IR-UWB.”
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