Press Room

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Adesto Technologies Closes 3rd Round Funding Led by Altis Semiconductor

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

• Altis Licenses CBRAM for Embedded Products in 130nm and 90nm

• Adesto Eyes $5B EEPROM and NOR Flash Market with Low Power CBRAM Technology

(Sunnyvale, California. BUSINESS WIRE)-- Adesto Technologies, the leading developer of the low power, low cost CMOS based Conductive Bridging RAM (CBRAM) Technology, has announced the closing of its third round of financing led by Altis Semiconductor. Adesto’s current investors also contributed pro-rata in the new round. The investment from Adesto’s manufacturing partner will also include a licensing agreement that enables Altis to offer embedded CBRAM memory IP for its customers.

“Our third round funding is a strong vote of confidence in Adesto’s ability to begin selling our first CBRAM devices and to make our IP available to customers through our Altis partnership,” said Narbeh Derhacobian, CEO of Adesto Technologies. He added, “Working with our engineering team, Altis Semiconductor has proven their expertise in processing CBRAM devices and both companies have achieved a high yielding CBRAM process technology in record times.”

Adesto was founded in 2007 to commercialize CBRAM technology for a wide range of standalone and embedded memory applications. Since its initial founding, Adesto has been focused on developing the first commercial CBRAM devices. Additionally, Adesto has partnered with three leading multi-billion dollar semiconductor firms for development of CBRAM technology, across a wide range of distinct memory market applications and opportunities.

“After two and a half years of close collaboration on the successful development of CBRAM memory, Altis is excited to announce it stands with Adesto not only as a manufacturing partner but also as an investor and licensee,” said Jean-Paul Beisson, CEO of Altis. “With this investment and license, we now can expand our CBRAM capabilities by offering the low power and low cost CMOS based memory to our embedded customers. Altis and Adesto are in early discussions with several customers with respect to utilizing this differentiated IP.”

Altis Semiconductor offers semiconductor technologies and value-added foundry services suitable for market segments like mobile, security and automotive. Specialty technologies in RF, embedded non-volatile Memory and high voltage offer customers the ability to address high value-added applications. These differentiated technologies are manufactured in the Corbeil-Essonnes fab under strict quality and operational controls.

“Adesto Technologies and Altis Semiconductor have made tremendous strides within a very short period of time to make CBRAM a viable non-volatile memory alternative to existing flash, EEPROM and embedded non-volatile memory technologies,” said Alan Niebel, founder and CEO for Web-Feet Research, Inc., a non-volatile memory and storage semiconductor research company located in Monterey, CA. “With this investment round, Adesto has the ability to eventually target a $5B EEPROM and NOR Flash market.”

About Adesto Technologies Corporation Adesto Technologies is a venture-backed semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California and the leading developer of the ultra low power, CMOS compatible Conductive Bridge RAM (CBRAM) memory technology platform. Adesto is planning to offer its first CBRAM products later in 2011. In addition, Adesto partners with leading semiconductor companies in the development of embedded CBRAM memory blocks for custom SOCs.

For more information, contact: Ed McKernan Adesto Technologies Corporation (408) 400-0578. ed.mckernan@adestotech.com

About Altis semiconductor Altis semiconductor is an independent and privately held company based in France with an industrial campus in Corbeil-Essonnes, a city 40 km south of Paris. The baseline technologies for Altis come from the proven technology platforms of IBM and Infineon, the former shareholders of Altis. With a robust technology portfolio, proven operational excellence and strict quality compliance, Altis is the ideal foundry partner to serve customers in different markets.

For more information, contact: Jean Leandri, Altis Semiconductor +33 1 6088 5990. jean.leandri@altissemiconductor.com

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Adesto Technologies Corporation Announce New Appointments to its Management Team

(Sunnyvale, California. BUSINESS WIRE)-- Adesto Technologies, the leading developer of the low power, low cost CMOS based Conductive Bridging RAM (CBRAM) Technology, announces the appointments of Michael Van Buskirk as Chief Technology Officer and Ravi Sunkavalli as Vice President of Product Development . The two join Adesto as the company is moving towards the production ramp of its first CBRAM devices slated for later this year. Michael Van Buskirk is considered an expert in the development and manufacturing of non-volatile memories having spent over 20 years at AMD and Spansion as Vice Presidnet of Worldwide Engineering, CTO and Corporate Vice President. Most notable, Mr. Van Buskirk was responsible for the corporate wide development of the MirrorBitTM technology at AMD. MirrorBitTM (Spansion’s charge trap NOR) technology development completely replaced their floating gate technology after the 90nm process node and became the basis for all of Spansion’s future non-volatile memory products. “With the growing interest in new, low power, non-volatile memories, I am pleased to be working on resistive change memory again. CBRAM has the potential to be deployed across a wide range of code and data storage applications in both discrete chips and embedded SOCs. Adesto has made tremendous progress in commercializing CBRAM and I look forward to being part of the team that is successfully bringing CBRAM to market,” said Mike Van Buskrik. Ravi Sunkavalli was previously the VP of Hardware Engineering at Achronix and before that the Director of IC Design at Velogix. Ravi brings to Adesto a wealth of experience in all aspects of complex technology integration in a variety of integrated circuit products. Mr. Sunkavalli will be directly involved in the customer design win efforts utilizing Adesto’s new CBRAM devices. “Adesto's CBRAM technology platform represents a significant breakthrough as a high performance, low power and scalable storage solution. I am very excited to join the accomplished team at Adesto, which has hundreds of man-years of proven experience in successfully delivering numerous flash memory technologies and products to market and is now deploying CBRAM in mainstream CMOS technology,” said Ravi Sunkavalli. He added, “I look forward to participating in this exciting next phase of Adesto's development efforts as it embarks on deploying CBRAM technology and products into the broader marketplace including embedded memory applications.” “Adesto Technologies is putting in place the key executives that will enable it to advance CBRAM technology platform to meet the challenge of advanced scaling memory solutions ,” said Alan Niebel, founder and CEO for Web-Feet Research, Inc., a non-volatile memory and storage semiconductor research company located in Monterey, CA. “Michael Van Buskirk is well known in the industry for his accomplishments at Spansion and should play a critical role in launching Adesto as a significant new player in the non-volatile memory field.” About Adesto Technologies Corporation Adesto Technologies is a venture-backed semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California and the leading developer of the ultra low power, CMOS compatible Conductive Bridge RAM (CBRAM) memory technology platform. Adesto is planning to offer its first CBRAM products later in 2011. In addition, Adesto partners with leading semiconductor companies in the development of embedded CBRAM memory blocks for custom SOCs. For more information, contact: Ed McKernan Adesto Technologies Corporation (408) 400-0578. ed.mckernan@adestotech.com

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Adesto Technologies and Altis Semiconductor Announce Partnership on the Development and Manufacturing of the Breakthrough CBRAM Memory Technology Platform

(Sunnyvale, California. BUSINESS WIRE)-- Adesto Technologies, the leading developer of Conductive Bridging RAM (CBRAM), a low power and low cost CMOS non-volatile memory solution, and Altis Semiconductor, the innovative European Specialty Foundry have announced the formation of a development and manufacturing partnership that will lead to the delivery of the world’s first Conductive Bridging RAM (CBRAM) based devices in 2011. Adesto Technologies and Altis reached their formal agreement after two and half years of close collaboration on the development of Adesto’s CBRAM technology and products leading the way to the production of world’s first resistive RAM memory device.

“We are pleased to announce this significant milestone that enables us to introduce our first commercial CBRAM non-volatile memory product,” said Narbeh Derhacobian, CEO of Adesto Technologies. “Altis has been a valuable partner that has demonstrated a high level of know-how and innovation in the development of our technology. Both companies have worked relentlessly to reach fully yielding devices in relatively record time which is a significant milestone in any new memory technology development effort.”

Adesto Technologies develops CBRAM non-volatile stand alone memory devices and embedded memory cores for licensing in a wide range of System-on-Chip applications. The company now holds a leadership position in the CBRAM memory technology IP and manufacturing know-how. CBRAM is considered to be best suited to replace today's floating gate based non-volatile memories used in discrete Flash memory devices and embedded System-on-Chip devices. CBRAM technology has been shown to scale both physically with Moore’s Law to below 20nm as well as operationally with sub 1 volt operation. Moreover, the capability of CBRAM cells to be programmed at sub 100ns speeds demonstrate a memory technology capable of high performance and low energy operation well suited for many low power applications such as mobile devices and power efficient servers. .The energy consumption of CBRAM technology has already demonstrated to be more than 100 times lower than current flash memory technologies in the market.

Altis Semiconductor offers semiconductor technologies and services suitable for market segments like mobile, security and automotive. Specialty technologies in RF, embedded Non Volatile Memory and high voltage offer the ability to address high value-added applications and these differentiated technologies are manufactured in the Corbeil-Essonnes fab under strict, proven operational and quality controls.

“We are ready for production ramp-up and commercialization. CBRAM is the low cost, low power and scalable emerging memory technology that opens up many opportunities for both Altis and Adesto.” said Jean-Paul Beisson, CEO of Altis. “Since the start of our joint collaboration, Adesto has demonstrated the ability to rapidly integrate CBRAM into our specialty CMOS process, leveraging Altis’ extensive experience in copper interconnects and emerging memory technologies. We reached target device yields in record time, covering all aspects from design support to mastering ramp up issues. Our dedicated production grade manufacturing toolsets and experienced engineering team has been a key to this success.”

“Adesto has made tremendous progress in commercializing CBRAM,” said Bob Merritt, an emerging memory market analyst and founding partner in Convergent Semiconductors. He added, “The manufacturing partnership with Altis will accelerate the introduction of CBRAM in a market that is looking to replace today’s Flash technologies.”

About Adesto Technologies Corporation
Adesto Technologies is a venture-backed semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California and the leading developer of Conductive Bridge RAM (CBRAM) memory technology platform. CBRAM is an ultra low power, CMOS compatible non-volatile memory that is customized for a wide range of discrete and embedded markets. Adesto Technologies Corporation currently partners with a number of leading semiconductor companies in the deployment of CBRAM technology in the market place.

For more information, contact: Ed McKernan Adesto Technologies Corporation (408) 400-0578. ed.mckernan@adestotech.com

About Altis semiconductor
Altis semiconductor is an independent and privately held companybased in France with an industrial campus in Corbeil-Essonnes, a city 40 km south of Paris. The baseline technologies for Altis come from the proven technology platforms of IBM and Infineon, the former shareholders of Altis. With a robust technology portfolio, proven operational excellence and strict quality compliance, Altis is the ideal foundry partner to serve customers in different markets.

For more information, contact: Jean Leandri, Altis Semiconductor +33 1 6088 5990. jean.leandri@altissemiconductor.com

Monday, November 29, 2010

Adesto Technologies Wins DARPA Award to Develop Sub-Threshold Non-Volatile, Embedded CBRAM Memory

Adesto plans to demonstrate Working Silicon Operating Down to 0.6V

(Sunnyvale, California. BUSINESS WIRE)-- Adesto Technologies, the leading developer of Conductive Bridging RAM (CBRAM), a low power and low cost CMOS non-volatile memory, is announcing that it has received an award from DARPA to develop and demonstrate CBRAM memory devices that operate at sub-threshold voltages – a level that is more than 10 times lower than standard Flash memory. A successful demonstration of the CBRAM technology could lead to groundbreaking memory and microcontroller devices that consume orders of magnitude lower power.
“We are thrilled to be selected by DARPA in this new endeavor to build and demonstrate a memory device that consumes power at a fraction of today’s memory,” said Narbeh Derhacobian, the CEO of Adesto Technologies. He added, “The DARPA effort when combined with our current development to make CBRAM economical and pervasive could have a dramatic impact on future mobile and embedded devices.”
Adesto Technologies develops CBRAM non-volatile stand alone memory devices and IP for embedding in a wide range of semiconductors. Recently, the company enhanced its leadership position in the emerging non-volatile memory market with the acquisition of key patents and IP related to CBRAM technology from Qimonda. In addition, Adesto announced the formation of a manufacturing partnership with Altis Semiconductor which will lead to the introduction of the first CBRAM product in 2011.
“Throughout my career I have evaluated many low power technologies and found CBRAM to have the potential to reshape microelectronics in a number of areas,” said Michael Fritze, Director of Disruptive Electronics at the Information Sciences Institute.

In addition to working with DARPA on sub-threshold non-volatile memories, Adesto has partnered with Professor Ben Calhoun of the University of Virginia to combine CBRAM with low voltage microelectronic circuits that he and his colleagues are developing in order to build ultra low power Microcontrollers (MCUs) and Systems-on-Chips (SOCs). “Adesto’s CBRAM is an outstanding memory technology that we can easily integrate with our ultra low voltage MCUs and SOCs in a standard CMOS process,” said Professor Calhoun at the University of Virginia. “We intend to demonstrate complete solutions within the next year.”

About Adesto Technologies Corporation
Adesto Technologies is a venture-backed semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California and the leading developer of Conductive Bridge RAM (CB-RAM) memory technology. CBRAM is an ultra low power, CMOS compatible non-volatile memory that is customized for a wide range of discrete and embedded markets. Adesto Technologies Corporation currently partners with a number of leading semiconductor companies in deployment of CBRAM technology in the market place.

For more information, contact: Ed McKernan Adesto Technologies Corporation (408) 400-0578. ed.mckernan@adestotech.com

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Adesto Technologies Appoints Nelson C. Chan to Board of Directors

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Adesto Technologies,, the leading developer of CBRAM, a low power and low cost CMOS non-volatile memory has announced today that Nelson C. Chan has been appointed to its Board of Directors, effective October 12, 2010. Mr. Chan was previously the Chief Executive Officer of Magellan Navigation Inc. and the Executive Vice President and General Manager, Consumer Business at SanDisk Corporation. Currently, Mr. Chan also serves on the board of directors of Affymetrix, Inc., Bridgelux, Nanosys Inc. and Synaptics Inc.

“We are very pleased to add Nelson Chan to our board of directors. His experience and background in building a multi-billion dollar enterprise and growing the consumer businesses at SanDisk and Magellan into recognized market leaders will be extremely valuable to Adesto in the coming years as we move forward in bringing our memory technology platform to the market,” said Narbeh Derhacobian, CEO of Adesto Technologies Corporation.

Adesto Technologies is the leading developer of Conductive Bridging RAM (CBRAM) non-volatile memory devices and intellectual property for embedded memory applications in a wide range of semiconductor markets. With the recent acquisition of key Qimonda CBRAM patents and IP, the company holds a leadership intellectual property position in the Resistive RAM (RRAM) memory field. CBRAM is considered a leading candidate to replace today's floating gate based non-volatile memories used in discrete Flash memory devices and embedded SOCs that require non-volatility and the future ability to scale with Moore’s Law in standard CMOS processes to below 12nm. The technology is also being considered for low power applications requiring sub 0.9V operation.

“I have watched Adesto make tremendous progress in the development of CBRAM as it nears its introduction,” said Nelson Chan. “The markets Adesto seeks to serve are ready for a new technology and I believe CBRAM is best suited to do so profitably.”

“The addition of Nelson Chan to the Adesto Board of Directors is another key step in the process of making CBRAM commercially successful,” said Alan Niebel, founder and CEO for Web-Feet Research, Inc., a non-volatile memory and storage semiconductor market research company located in Monterey, CA. He added, “Nelson will provide extensive experience in developing the new memory growth markets that will benefit from CBRAM’s unique combination of ultra low power and high performance.”

About Adesto Technologies Corporation

Adesto Technologies is a venture-backed semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California and the leading developer of Conductive Bridge RAM (CB-RAM) memory technology. CBRAM is an ultra low power, CMOS compatible non-volatile memory that is customized for a wide range of discrete and embedded markets. Adesto Technologies Corporation currently partners with a number of leading semiconductor companies in deployment of CBRAM technology in the market place.

For more information, contact: Ed McKernan Adesto Technologies Corporation (408) 400-0578. ed.mckernan@adestotech.com

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Adesto Technologies Corporation Acquires Key Qimonda CBRAM Memory IP and Patents

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Adesto Technologies, a venture backed Silicon Valley company that is developing an ultra low power and scalable memory technology platform, has acquired intellectual property and patents related to Conductive Bridging Random Access Memory (CBRAM) technology from Qimonda AG. The agreement includes the purchase of 30 CBRAM patent families and the licensing of additional undisclosed patents.

“CBRAM is one of the leading emerging memory technologies that will enable the semiconductor industry to innovate with lower power and lower costs in standard CMOS processes”

“Our agreement with Qimonda now positions Adesto as the clear leader in CBRAM memory technology and enhances our current IP position in this area tremendously,” said Dr. Narbeh Derhacobian, CEO of Adesto Technologies. He added, “We are impressed with the Qimonda developed IP and believe it will accelerate our time to market in delivering our memory technology platform solution to end users in discrete and embedded application spaces.”

“Qimonda has created a large portfolio of patents in the area of emerging memory technologies. The agreement with Adesto is a step further on our way of marketing the Qimonda patents in the best interest of the creditors”, said Dr. Michael Jaffe, insolvency administrator over the estate of Qimonda AG. Qimonda AG, the former leading memory chip producer based in Munich, is under insolvency administration in Germany since January, 2009. In the course of the insolvency proceedings it is marketing its approximately 10,000 worldwide patents and patent applications stemming from decades of semiconductor research and development.

Qimonda had a strong history in developing emerging memory technologies like CBRAM. The nearly four year effort spent in developing CBRAM resulted in demonstrating the potential of this core technology to deliver a cost effective, high performance and low power non-volatile memory solution.

CBRAM technology is considered by many analysts to be the leading candidate to replace today’s floating gate based non volatile memories used in discrete Flash, Server memory as well as embedded because in addition to its low cost of integration into a standard CMOS process, it delivers low power and high performance operation, and its scalability.

“CBRAM is one of the leading emerging memory technologies that will enable the semiconductor industry to innovate with lower power and lower costs in standard CMOS processes,” said Alan Niebel, founder and CEO for Web-Feet Research, Inc., a non-volatile memory and storage semiconductor market research company located in Monterey, CA. Mr. Niebel added, “The potential for CBRAM goes beyond simple commodity flash as it also can be a very cost effective memory solution for embedded applications enabling a host of capabilities in many segments of integrated System-on-Chip end markets.”

About Adesto Technologies Corporation

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Adesto Technologies Named a Finalist for EETimes 2010 ACE Startup of the Year

Adesto Technologies, the leading developer of CBRAM memory, the ultra low voltage, low power CMOS compatible NVM has been named a finalist by EETimes for their 2010 Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Award as startup of the year. Adesto’s innovative, non-volatile CBRAM memory is a platform technology that targets a wide range of standalone and embedded applications.

“It is a great honor to be selected as a finalist for the 2010 EETimes ACE Award,” said Narbeh Derhacobian, CEO of Adesto Technologies. He added, “We believe that 2010 will be a significant year for us as we not only deliver our first product but also close on our initial IP partnerships.”

About Adesto Technologies

Adesto Technologies is a venture-backed semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California and the leading developer of Conductive Bridging RAM (CBRAM) memory technology. CBRAM is an ultra low power, CMOS compatible memory that is customized for a wide range of discrete and embedded markets. Adesto currently partners with a number of leading semiconductor companies in the development and commercialization of CBRAM technology. For more information visit Adesto’s website at www.adestotech.com. Adesto is a Trademark of Adesto Technologies Corporation.