Aravind Eye Foundation

Datometry

Movandi

Orion Labs

Quartic.ai

Clairvolex

Cloudleaf

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Consumer Electronics

Data Infrastructure

Internet of Things

Semiconductors

Software

As 5G is in the mid-stages of coming to market, companies are racing to create the technology to make it possible. Movandi is far ahead of the pack, in this regard.

“How will the all startups created in 2020 be different than startups built before?”

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Almost 17 years ago to the date, Intel launched [Centrino](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrino), its latest mobile processor of that time. It was a seminal moment in the evolution from tethered to wireless connectivity that we in the industry referred to as BC and AC periods — “Before Centrino” and “After Centrino.” Centrino ushered in 10Mbps wireless LAN connectivity for laptops by integrating [802.11b](http://www.ieee802.org/11/) WiFi. For the first time, people experienced untethered access to data, and the wireless revolution gained speed.

Perhaps even more important than the form factor and battery life of the devices we were creating at Intel was the ensuing and insatiable addiction to wireless bandwidth and mobility that drove a cycle of innovation in devices and wireless capacity increases, and changed us all at work, home and play. However, the inability to have a persistent connection and a seamless handoff while being truly mobile became an urgent issue to be solved. The voracious appetite of video-on-the-go, combined with the inherent constraints in existing networks became the catalysts for consumers to crave more from their cellular networks. We had been given a tiny taste of what was possible in WiFi, and we wanted more. Much, much more!

The journey to today was far from simple. Most of us remember when the concept of doing a Zoom call from the back of an Uber or streaming a baseball game to your family across the world from a packed stadium was simply unthinkable (perhaps in these Covid-19 times that last part is still unthinkable!). But that journey holds many parallels with the journey from 4G to 5G. Increasing our data capabilities across the world is critical. According to Verizon, by 2020, 20 billion devices are expected to connect to the internet, and by 2025 that is expected to grow to over 50 billion devices. All of them will rely on and stress the existing network bandwidth to communicate. It’s not just smartphones, either. Self-driving cars; AR/VR applications; IoT systems; and remote healthcare providers using telemedicine for the post-COVID era will all vie for the same bandwidth pie.

WRVI’s [latest investment, Movandi](https://movandi.com/movandi-announces-27-million-series-c-to-accelerate-5g-network-deployments/), was made through this lens. As 5G is in the mid-stages of coming to market, companies are racing to create the technology to make it possible. [Movandi](http://www.movandi.com/) is far ahead of the pack, in this regard.
When [Lip Bu Tan](https://www.wrvi.vc/team/) (a Co Founder of WRVI Capital along with [Michael Marks](https://www.wrvi.vc/team/), [Nic Brathwaite](https://www.wrvi.vc/team/) and myself) — with his uncanny ability to smell billion-dollar business opportunities and identify top-tier talent — decided to provide seed funding to [Maryam](https://movandi.com/about/) and [Reza Rofougaran](https://movandi.com/about/), the true pioneers in this field, it was a clear indication that we were looking at the formation of another great American company. The two founders hold more than 1,000 patents, and are technologists and entrepreneurs in their hearts and souls. After building and successfully exiting their prior company Innovent to Broadcom, they were responsible for building and growing Broadcom’s wireless business to revenues of over $3B.

This was essentially the motivation for WRVI Capital to bet on Movandi — a company with unparalleled talent, a huge business potential, and targeting an industry at a cusp of a transition. Perhaps more importantly, it is a company that has the promise to take the crown of 5G leadership from the Chinese, the Finns and the Swedes.

To truly understand the power of Movandi’s technology, it helps to look back at the evolution of our current wireless technologies.
When Intel drove the pioneering work in WiFi, it did so through adoption of Smart Antenna technologies such as MiMo, Beam Forming, etc., which in turn drove WiFi to great success through multiple revisions to the original and modest 802.11b standard. Intel, already a leader in WiFi, began to search for a mobile internet technology, or as they called it, “WiFi-on-steroids.” In 2003, Intel acquired Iospan Wireless’s IP, a wireless technology company founded by Dr. Arogyaswami Paulraj (currently Venture Partner of WRVI Capital and Emeritus Professor, Stanford University). Iospan had pioneered a new physical layer technology called MIMO-OFDM to build a cellular-like broadband wireless system for fixed/nomadic applications.

Iospan’s technology became the foundation for Intel’s foray into fully mobile internet access that they called WiMAX. WiMAX was standardized by the IEEE 802.16 committee and strongly promoted by Intel as a 4G mobile internet solution with 50 Mbps-plus data rates and seamless mobility. Intel also worked with many national administrations to allocate wide bandwidth spectrum in 2.3 and 2.5 GHz, above the frequency bands used in cellular. It also invested in a new crop of data-only mobile service providers to create a growing ecosystem for mobile data networks. At this point, the existing mobile voice networks were still transitioning from 2G to 3G technology with the standard developed by the 3GPP consortium. The initial success of WIMAX convinced the 3GPP community that mobile internet was a huge market and that MIMO-OFDM was the right technology. This led, in 2008, to the 3GPP’s 4G LTE standard essentially adopting WiMAX’s technology. The 3GPP LTE, in addition, provided many compatibility features to the existing 2G and 3G networks. The incumbent mobile voice operators clearly found LTE significantly better aligned with their spectrum and infrastructure investments and tilted sharply away from WiMAX.

Meanwhile 4G LTE ushered in the true mobile broadband era that we live in, allowing us to enjoy literally hundreds of services from conference calls to Instagram and cab hailing. LTE has now reached 4.5 Billion people worldwide and is likely to be in service for another decade.

5G is the next generation of mobile communications technology standardized by 3GPP. 5G’s services go well beyond those of 4G which primarily supported connectivity to personal devices. 5G will connect a myriad of new devices including machines, sensors, actuators, self-driving cars, robots and drones, to support a much larger range of applications.

5G also broke new ground in spectrum bands. Current wireless networks operate below 2.6 GHz and have, on the average across countries, a total of about 400 MHz of available spectrum. The increasing demand for high speed and massive device connectivity will clearly need much more spectrum. The 5G spectrum includes the low band and mid band spectrum of the 1G through 4G frequencies as well as the new high-band spectrum, also known as millimetric wavelength (mmWave). The additional spectrum added totals over 4 GHz, multiplying spectrum availability for mobile services by 10x.

As my colleague Dr. Paulraj pointed out recently, it has been many decades since an American company led in wireless technology. Movandi has constructed an incredible moat around their business with IP assets, a world class team and operator relationships, and is well placed to seize global leadership away from the Chinese, the Finns and the Swedes, becoming the defining company in the 5G era.

Customers old enough to remember the early days of WiFi should hold on to their seats now as they watch the rise of 5G. If 2003 brought the ‘old’ AC (After-Centrino) world, we may be entering a ‘new’ AC (After-Covid) world where innovative companies like Movandi lead the way!

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The Bet on Movandi to Change mmWave 5G Networks

Movandi develops network technology designed to expand wireless communication and connectivity across the globe. It makes components for use with the millimeter wave system of extremely high frequency radio signals that is used in high-speed wireless broadband like 5G.

Why we backed Movandi?

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Movandi's mmwave technologies are poised to be the backbone of leading 5G networks globally. 

5G Wireless Technologies

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Clairvolex is an IP asset management (IPAM) and analytics company, partnering with patent owners to visualize, aggregate and manage their patent portfolios to generate lateral licensing revenues. Their platform serves sectors including enterprise software, digital electronics, semiconductors, and telecom.

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Cloudleaf is a supply chain and real-time data acquisition company with a sensor platform to deliver scalable, real-time actionable intelligence for assets (in-motion). Cloudleaf's Sensor Fabric is composed of self-provisioning location, load and time aware sensors and gateways, connected for cloud-based event processing and analytics.

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Quartic.ai is an AI/ML company focusing on smart manufacturing and IoT. Quartic's solution enables plant subject-matter experts to leverage AI for process and energy optimization and predictive maintenance. Fortune 500 companies in pharmaceutical, mining and metals and other industries use this platform.

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Datometry is a database virtualization platform company. The company's platform enables virtualization of databases, enabling seamless migration of database applications to the cloud without any changes to code. The company's initial focus is moving enterprise applications built on the Teradata platform onto the Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Amazon Redshift, or Google BigQuery.

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Orion is a voice-first enterprise communication platform connecting frontline workers and teams with AI-driven automation. Global customers transform their workforce productivity and safety through secure instant communications, AI Workflows, location services, and software integrations. 

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Recogni was incorporated in 2017 to help auto manufacturers reach Level 2+ vehicle autonomy. Recogni's Vision Cognition Module (VCM), based on a custom ASIC, is capable of running deep-learning networks with amazing efficiency. This purpose-built solution can enable a car to detect small objects at long distances while consuming minimal battery power.

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Recogni

Platform9 is the leading Managed Kubernetes provider for private, edge, and hybrid clouds. With a mission to enable freedom in cloud computing, the company delivers cloud-native technologies with SaaS simplicity that are easy to operate and scale, while supporting broad cloud capabilities that run on any infrastructure. 

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Platform9

Platform9 is the leading Managed Kubernetes cloud provider.

Sriram Viswanathan

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

Mobility

Networking

Software & Services

Storage

Systems & Data Infrastructure

Founding Managing Partner

Schneider Electric

SoftBank

Eta Compute

Fungible

HiDeep

Innovium

Katana Graph

Komprise

LightBits

Nuvia

Prosimo

Proteantecs

SambaNova Systems

VDOO

Vayyar Imaging

CNEX Labs

Credo

Dustphotonics

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LIP-BU

AI / Machine Learning

Data Center

Innovium is a semiconductor company driving efficient resource sharing and freeing data flow in hyperscale networks. The team is proven in delivering market-leading products bringing billions in revenues. Innovium's Telanyx Ethernet Switch Silicon brings industry leading analytics, efficiency and programmability. 

Why we backed Innovium?

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Innovium is a leading provider of high performance, innovative switching silicon solutions and its products have been selected and validated by market-leaders.

High performance switch silicon

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NetSpeed Systems provides scalable Network-on-Chip (NoC) IPs to System-on-chip (SoC) designers for applications from mobile to high-performance computing and networking. NetSpeed’s configurable and synthesizable offerings will help Intel develop new SoCs more efficiently with an evolving set of IP. 

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NetSpeed Systems

NOD is a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) focused company specializing in Spatial Input. NOD’s Sensor Fusion platform fuses data from multiple sensors for immediate, precision motion tracking and natural, gesture-based navigation. Far reaching applications include drones, smart homes, and virtual reality.

COMPANY NEWS

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WekaIO has built the world’s fastest parallel file system on a new architecture optimized for NVMe-flash and hybrid cloud, and can meet the demands of modern workloads with the most I/O-intensive and extreme technical computing requirements. Weka’s file system, WekaFS, is designed to provide extreme performance at any scale, and is ideal for all I/O intensive workloads including machine learning, GPU acceleration, genomics, life sciences, financial analytics, log management and technical compute.  

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WekaIO

Altair Semiconductor develops high performance, single-mode LTE chipsets, with a range of reference hardware products, baseband processors, and RF transceivers. This portfolio covers broad cellular 4G market needs, from supercharged video-centric applications to ultra-low power, low cost IoT, and M2M.

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Altair’s portfolio covers the complete spectrum of cellular 4G market needs, from supercharged video-centric applications all the way to ultra-low power, low cost IoT and M2M.

Single-Mode LTE Chipsets

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Altair Semiconductor

Annapurna is a fabless semiconductor company serving the high performance Embedded and Data Center/cloud markets with a Platform-on-Chip approach. Annapurna optimizes cloud infrastructure performance and cost by moving the hypervisor and networking stack to a purpose-built hardware accelerator (ASIC).

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Annapurna Labs enabled the launch of blazing fast AWS virtual machines by allowing the Intel Xen hypervisor to be be replaced with a highly optimized KVM hypervisor tightly coupled with Annapurna's ASICs.

ASICs for Virtualization

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Annapurna Labs

Aquantia Corp. develops integrated, high-speed communication circuits for Ethernet connectivity, including products for cloud data centers, client connectivity and carrier access. Aquantia serves integrated circuit suppliers and original equipment/design manufacturers through worldwide direct sales. 

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Aquantia

Aura Semiconductors is a fabless IC design company providing high performance products in IoT radios, enterprise timing and portable audio markets. Aura's IoT radios and amplifiers provide superior RF performance and fidelity with ultra-low power consumption at less than half of the board area footprint.

Why we backed Aura Semiconductors?

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Aura Semiconductor

Timing ICs & Low Power RF designs (Bluetooth for IoT radios)

Berkeley Lights is a digital cell biology company working to accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of cell-based products. Developed platforms automate the manipulation, analysis and selection of individual cells to empower engineering of personalized therapies and antibody discovery.

Why we backed Berkeley Lights?

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Berkeley Lights completed its IPO in 2020 and has established market leadership in digital cell biology.

Digital Cell Biology

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Berkeley Lights

CNEX is a semiconductor company developing revolutionary NVMe and Open-Channel SSD controller ASICs that deliver high-performing, low and predictable latency, scalability, and flexibility for software-defined-storage. The company has partnered with leading solid-state storage manufacturers, and data center and systems customers. CNEX SSD controllers deliver high-performance with low and predictable latency, and provide flexibility for software-defined-storage with host-based FTL, and Ethernet I/O for storage fabric scalability.

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CNEX LABS

NVMe and Open-Channel SSD controller ASICs

Credo provides semiconductor solutions for the data center, enterprise networking, and high-performance computing markets. Their Serializer-Deserializer (SerDes) technology delivers the scalability and signal integrity for platforms requiring single-lane 25G, 50G, and 100G connectivity. 

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High-performance Semi for data center connectivity

Eta Compute is a semiconductor company focused on SoCs that bring machine intelligence to energy-constrained systems interconnected wirelessly. Energy efficient ASICs and novel neural network AI software address applications at the edge for Speech Recognition, Keyword Spotting, PPG applications, etc.

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Habana Labs is an AI Processor company building ground-up platforms optimized for training deep neural networks and for inference deployment in production environments. Habana is unlocking the true potential of AI with orders of magnitude gains in processing performance, scalability, cost and efficiency.

Why we backed Habana Labs?

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100% AI. Processors purpose-built to unlock performance.

Habana Labs Ltd.

Unlocking the true potential of AI with solutions offering orders of magnitude improvements in processing performance, scalability, power consumption and cost.

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Habana Labs was acquired by Intel for ≈$2B to advance Intel's AI strategy with a high-performance training processor family and a standards-based programming environment to address evolving AI workload

AI and deep learning processor for cloud

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Habana Labs

Komprise builds software focused on intelligent data management. Their platform adds virtual data lake capability with a zero lock-in, zero-interference, storage agnostic software solution. Their automation software adapts and scales to the customer’s environment, eliminating the cost, complexity and disruption of legacy data management 

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LightBits builds hardware and software addressing the need for disaggregation in cloud-scale/hyperscale data centers. Their alternative solutions for disaggregation eliminate the need to change network infrastructure or affect data center clients. Lightbits' innovative NVMe/TCP solution provides up to 50% reduction in tail latency.

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Lightbits Labs

Lion is a semiconductor company developing battery management ICs using Switched-Capacitor technologies, enabling world-best efficiencies, lower heat dissipation, ultra-fast charging and smaller form factors. Lion has also developed the world's smallest, single-chip PMIC solution not requiring any discrete inductors.

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Lion Semiconductor

Localize.city is a real estate marketplace designed for everyone. Their AI-based “Insight Engine” analyzes thousands of datasets, uncovering critical information about every home in the market: the impact of future construction, pricing guidance, the amount of sunlight a home receives, and more.

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Localize.city

MetaSwitch is a network and cloud-native communications software company. This software powers the voice, data, and unified communications services of fixed, mobile, and converged operators worldwide, while also acting as the foundation of building the cloud-based service platforms of the future.

Why we backed Metaswitch Networks?

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MetaSwitch

Communications Software for Large Networks

ProteanTecs is revolutionizing electronics reliability by tracking health and performance from within. ProteanTecs has developed a cloud-based platform, which combines data created in chip-embedded agents, with machine learning, to predict faults before they become failures.



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ProteanTecs

Cloud based platform that monitors ICs biometrics

Quantenna is the global leader and innovator of high-performance Wi-Fi solutions. The company perfects Wi-Fi by establishing benchmarks for speed, range, efficiency, and reliability. Quantenna takes a multidimensional approach, from silicon and system to software, to provide total Wi-Fi solutions. 


Why we backed Quantenna?

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Quantenna

RF Pixels, Inc. is developing beamforming technologies to enable the delivery of higher-rate 5G broadband at gigabits per second over millimeter wave spectrum. The technology mitigates attenuation issues of mmWave spectrum through beamforming and electronically controlling an array of radios to focus energy only where it's useful.

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RF Pixels

SambaNova is a full-stack AI platform company building advanced integrated semiconductor and software platforms to run AI applications from the datacenter to the edge. Its platform bridges the gap between the demands of ML applications and the capabilities of existing processing platforms.

Why we backed SambaNova Systems?

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Tagore is fabless semiconductor company founded in January 2011 to pioneer GaN semiconductor processes. The company's proprietary technologies significantly reduce complexity, size and power consumption of wireless systems and other applications and address key challenges in Power Management, Charging, Cellular Infrastructure, Land Mobile and Military Radios. Tagore's products include GaN RF Switches, RF Power Transistors, and GaN ICs and GaN FETs for power management applications.

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Tagore Technology

Vayyar Imaging is a leader in 4D radar imaging technology, providing advanced intelligent sensors to the automotive, home, industrial, retail, and medical industries. These sensors can see through walls, objects, and human tissue, and can track and map in real-time.

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VeriSilicon is a Silicon Platform as a Service (SiPaaS) company providing world class System on a Chip (SoC) and System in a Package (SiP) solutions, and is a leading IP provider for markets including mobile, datacenters, IoT, automotive, industrial, and medical electronics.


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VeriSilicon went public in 2020. It is ranked 1st in mainland China and 7th worldwide for IP license revenue.

Sriram Viswanathan

Prior Experience

Boards

Education

Focus Areas

Sriram’s Perspectives

the bet on movandi to change mmwave 5g networks

Current Investments

Connect With Sriram

Rest of the team

Lip-Bu Tan

Michael Marks

Nicholas Brathwaite

Sudhir Rao

Andrew Kau

Gani Subramaniam

Niel Ransom

Roni Hefetz

Steve Fu

Terry Gilton

Sarah Lucas

Ari Rubin

Shantanu Murti

David Goldman

Shrenik Kenia

Vishnu Das

Ajay Shah

Bill Moore

Dr. Paulraj Arogyaswami

Ravi Jacob

Matthew Marsh

Teresa Smith

Robin Clewley

Ganesh Krishnan

Joana Tieu

Vishal Nagar

Transforming potential into brilliance.