VCs invest in New Imaging Technologies for CMOS image sensor development
New Imaging Technologies (NIT; Evry, France) has concluded a round of private equity financing from several French high-tech investment firms totaling 3 million euros. The new round of investment for NIT is oriented towards the ongoing development of innovative CMOS image sensor technologies and further business expansion.
"We are convinced that NIT’s wide dynamic range technology has the potential to be a leader in the growing market of CMOS image sensor technology," says Jean Philippe Gendre, partner at VC firm Emertec Gestion. "NIT’s unique Native WDR technology can cover a broad range of applications that were previously not addressed because of the lack of available sensors with such performances.”
“NIT’s engineering teams proven scientific track record and excellent management team was key to secure our decision”, says Gilles Daguet senior partner at ACE Management, another of the investors. “This capital increase will secure NIT continued growth. We strongly believe in the strategy and of the market potential for NIT’s CMOS image sensors." The third VC company is Alto Invest.
“This substantial capital increase will allow NIT to implement in time our strategic roadmap of new product introduction and sales development”, says Pierre Potet, President of NIT. NIT was funded in 2007 by Pr Yang NI, through a spin-off the the French National Institute for Telecommunications. A first round of initial financing occurred in 2008 through Bluebird Venture, a VC firm specializing in investing at early stage in high technology firms.
About NIT
NIT’s technology portfolio contains strategic patents and know-how to various aspects of CMOS image sensors, among which are the Photovoltaic Pixel structure, high fill factors, and low noise read-out circuits. NIT unique and innovative feature is the so called patented MAGIC pixel structure, which provides an extremely high dynamic range, a full logarithmic response, and the lack of accommodation to the variations of illumination. These unique features allow NIT to address fast growing vision markets with a novel breakthrough technology, where the lack of available sensors was a limit to the market expansion.
Since 2007 NIT has develop a portfolio of high dynamic range imaging sensors that are already sampled by several customers for machine vision, security and surveillance, and defense applications. A strategic move toward automotive and transportation applications is currently under progress as the high dynamic range performance is of premium interest to this market.
SOURCE: New Imaging Technologies
Posted by Conard Holton
Vision Systems Design