Nextreme Thermal Solutions announced the securing of $13 million in Series B financing. The round was led by Chart Venture Partners and included previous investors Redshift Venture Partners, Harris & Harris Group, Inc., In-Q-Tel and RTI International as well as Japan-based ITOCHU Corp. and ITOCHU Technology Ventures, Inc. The company states that the funding will be used to ramp its products into full production in 2009 in response to demand from the photonics and military markets, and to develop new products for the computing, consumer and mobile markets.
Nextreme states that it is focused on solving the thermal issues that are becoming more widespread in the electronics industry. As an example, the company states that a major producer of graphics processors said recently that some of its notebook-use graphics chips failed because the packaging materials could not withstand the "extreme thermal environments" brought about by a combination of inadequate thermal management and frequent power cycling seen in notebook computers. This environment is particularly challenging for complex graphics processors. The company states that it will take a one-time charge of $150 to $200 million during its second quarter (2008) to resolve the problem with its customers.
"There are very few breakthrough innovations in the market today addressing these industry-wide thermal issues," said Ted Hobart, partner with Chart Venture Partners (CVP). CVP is a $100 million early stage venture capital fund investing in security-related technologies with government and commercial applications. "Nextreme is managed by an accomplished start-up team and offers a highly differentiated technology backed by a very strong intellectual property position."
Nextreme began shipping its first product in October of 2007 and recently brought up production in a new facility.
"We are very pleased with where we are now positioned," said Jesko von Windheim, CEO of Nextreme. "We are seeing strong interest in the OptoCooler UPF4 and UPF40 products and anticipate design wins in the telecom industry this year. With financing in place and production up and running, we can concentrate fully on making that happen."
