Braveheart Investments Regulatory News (BRH)

14 Jun 2007 07:01

Braveheart Investment Group plc14 June 2007 14 June 2007 Braveheart Investment Group plc ("Braveheart" or the "Group") Alpha EIS Fund invests £320,000 in Spiral Gateway Braveheart (AIM: BRH), the technology commercialisation and investmentmanagement company, announces that it has made an investment of £320,000 intoSpiral Gateway Ltd. via its Alpha EIS Fund. This is the Group's second round offunding into Spiral Gateway. Investors in the Alpha Fund include the Bank ofScotland Corporate and Scottish Enterprise as well as the Group's clients. Spiral Gateway, a semiconductor company, was incorporated in 2004 and is aspin-out from the University of Edinburgh. This round of funding will enableSpiral Gateway to recruit staff and further develop its technology beforeseeking what is likely to be a more substantial round of funding early nextyear. Spiral Gateway's business model is to sell microchips based on itsReconfigurable Instruction Cell Array (RICA) technology. The first customer tolicense a RICA based product signed an end user licence agreement in February2007. RICA represents a major opportunity for manufacturers for portable applicationssuch as phone handsets, cameras and mobile multimedia devices, to increasefunctionality and flexibility whilst reducing cost. It is a revolutionaryprocessor architecture that enables devices to reach the power and performanceof an application specific integrated circuit ("ASIC") implementation and stillhave complete flexibility because application changes are made in standardsoftware. This means that a range of applications can be run on any one devicein a highly optimized fashion and modifications or new functions are easilyadded. These changes are dynamically loaded onto a device and run without anyperformance penalty - and without the need for multi-million dollar fabricationruns. The company is currently focused on the development of its first commercialmicrochip. The initial commercial development under consideration is a productfor image processing which has many possible applications. Spiral Gateway is inearly negotiations with major corporates in the mobile and consumer sectors, with a view to testing the technology in an industrial setting. As part of its commitment to aid portfolio companies in the successful andtimely commercialisation of their Intellectual Property, Braveheart hasappointed Alan Henderson as Chairman of the Board of Spiral Gateway. Alan has abackground in engineering, marketing and sales and was recently part of thefounding team that sold Alphamosaic to Broadcom for $125m within four years ofstart-up. Commenting, Chief Executive of Braveheart, Geoffrey Thomson, said, "Astechnology evolves, so has the pressure on every day devices to keep up with thepace of change. The increase in processing performance required by new devicesis prolific, however consumers won't accept degradation in battery life. To meetthese demands new processing architectures are needed." "Spiral Gateway's RICA technology represents what we believe to be an importantcommercial opportunity for manufacturers to increase their functionality andflexibility, whilst reducing project risks and costs." Matthew Lawrenson, one of the founders of Spiral Gateway added, "Braveheart hassupported our company throughout its early life. This round of funding will helpus to strengthen our technical teams and hence our R&D and product refinementprocesses." "We are delighted that Alan Henderson has joined us as Chairman and we lookforward to working with him as we take the company forward." -Ends- For further information, please contact: Braveheart Investment Group Tavistock Communications Spiral GatewayGeoffrey Thomson Richard Sunderland Matt LawrensonChief Executive Rachel Drysdale Tel: 01738 587555 Tel: 020 7920 3150 Tel: 0131 472 4704 rdrysdale@tavistock.co.uk The Alpha EIS Fund ("the Fund") Established in December 2005, the £2.5 million Fund was set up as a taxefficient vehicle to invest in early-stage, university spin out companies, richin intellectual property, with potential for significant growth, through thecommercialisation of their IP. The Fund is managed by Braveheart andparticipants include Bank of Scotland Corporate, Scottish Enterprise, NESTA andBraveheart's own clients.The Fund will deliver a minimum of ten EIS qualifyinginvestments, sourced through the Group's unique framework of strong formalrelationships with Scottish universities and business parks. To date the fund has made five investments. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange