eASIC Secured $17M Funding from New Investors Crescendo and Evergreen and from Existing Investors KPCB and Vinod Khosla

Business Wire, Oct 6, 2005

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Crescendo and Evergreen have Joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Vinod Khosla in Supporting eASIC's Innovative Programmable ASIC Products

eASIC(R) Corporation, a provider of Programmable ASIC products including Configurable Logic and Structured ASIC, today announced that it has secured $17 Million in equity financing from two new investors Crescendo Ventures, who led this round, and Evergreen Venture Partners as well as from existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Vinod Khosla. The funding will be used for expanding global operations and sales and further developing the company's Programmable ASIC products at the 90nm and 65nm technology nodes.

"eASIC has demonstrated a true disruptive technology with a high potential to become market leader in the $20B plus custom logic space," said Wayne Cantwell, General Partner at Crescendo Ventures. "At Crescendo, we support emerging companies and talented entrepreneurs in their drive to originate novel solutions for critical market issues. eASIC has the vision, the technology and the management expertise to accomplish this goal and achieve their fast growth potential."

"We have been watching eASIC's progress and market traction and are pleased to have this opportunity to join in, providing our vote of confidence in the team and their vision," said Boaz Dinte, Managing Partner at Evergreen Venture Partners. "eASIC has made impressive progress to date in terms of technology development and strategic partner wins and this round will help them expand their engineering, sales and marketing resources."

"The custom logic space is in dire need of transformation and innovation. eASIC's technology and market timing is perfect," said Vinod Khosla, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who was named the Silicon Valley's most successful venture capitalist. "eASIC introduces the method by which we can usher in a new era of hardware customization. No longer will it be many engineers per design. We will be back to the days of many designs per engineer. I am pleased to personally and together with KPCB continue to be part of this dramatic change."

"The closure of this financing round represents both an acknowledgement of eASIC's current achievements as well as a confirmation of our future potential, drawing upon our strong technology assets," said Ronnie Vasishta, eASIC CEO. "Our NRE-free ASIC products are designed to expand into a wide range of ASIC and FPGA applications where users consider cost, performance and programmability to be critical. With the help of such world class investors, we are already making inroads into the market and are on track to achieving a leadership position in the Programmable ASIC arena."

About eASIC

eASIC offers breakthrough Programmable ASIC products including Configurable Logic and Structured ASIC, aimed at dramatically reducing the overall fabrication cost and time of customized high-performance semiconductor chips. Its patented architecture enables rapid and low-cost ASIC and SoC (System-on-Chip) designs through the innovative use of proven programmable logic technology coupled with single Via-layer customizable routing. With just one Via layer to customize, Direct-write e-Beam processing becomes possible at 10x the pace, thereby enabling eASIC to offer NRE-free Structured ASIC devices. eASIC's technology has been successfully proven in silicon and validated by world-class semiconductor vendors.

eASIC Corporation is a privately held company, Venture Capital backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB), Crescendo Ventures, Evergreen Partners and Vinod Khosla. Headquartered in San Jose, California, eASIC was founded in 1999 by Zvi Or-Bach, who is also the founder of Chip Express. www.eASIC.com

Visit eASIC booth #204 at FSA Suppliers Expo, San Jose Convention Center.