Arjun Gupta Joins as Acting CEO
Foster City, California, January 30, 2006 - Validity Sensors, Inc., a provider of durable, high performance silicon-on-flex fingerprint sensors, today announced a $16 million financing led by TeleSoft Partners, bringing the total funds raised to $35 million. The funds will be used for working capital to expand the sales and marketing efforts and for next generation product development. As part of the financing, Validity has moved its headquarters to Foster City, California and Arjun Gupta, Managing Partner of TeleSoft Partners, has assumed the role of interim CEO until the company recruits a permanent CEO. Alex Erhart has become Executive VP of Products and Operations.
Validity's patented LiveFlexTM is the only fingerprint acquisition technology that utilizes RF sensing technology to penetrate deep into the living tissue of a finger through a robust flexible plastic film. LiveFlex uses standard Chip-on-Flex packaging that decouples the sensing elements from the fragile silicon die, and uniquely delineates the size of the silicon, determining cost, from the size of the sensor, determining security. The Validity sensor affords the fingerprint sensor industry a quantum leap in durability by requiring the user to only come in contact with Kapton, a highly resilient material, and allows Validity to solve the industry-wide reliability problems associated with direct human contact to silicon, such as ESD or incidental impact.
"We are delighted to lead the financing in Validity Sensors. The fingerprint biometrics industry is poised to experience explosive growth. Validity offers superior durability, form factor and imaging performance", said Arjun Gupta, Validity Acting CEO and Telesoft Managing Partner. "The markets for Validity's sensors include Laptops, Peripherals, Memory Sticks, Wireless Devices, Access Control, and Smart Cards, which cumulatively will be billions of units in the future. The "Two Factor Authentication Initiative" in the banking industry is a good example of the emerging requirements for authentication and identity management."
"We are very excited to significantly expand our partnership with TeleSoft. This financing enables Validity to solidify its position in the PC market, and to expand our offerings into emerging biometrics markets, like wireless and access control" noted Alex Erhart, Executive VP of Products and Operations.
"This is a very significant milestone for Validity. The funding allows Validity to expedite development of next generation biometric sensing devices and to build on Validity's increasing market share as fingerprint sensors become ubiquitous," added Fred Benkley, Founder and Chief Scientist.
Validity's VFS101 finger print sensor, and the VFS131 smaller finger print sensor, are both shipping now.
About Telesoft Partners
TeleSoft Partners is a venture capital firm focused on next generation communications and information technology companies. TeleSoft manages capital commitments of $625+ million and focuses on systems, software, services and components. Over the last decade, TeleSoft and its principals have funded and helped build 50+ portfolio companies resulting in 20+ acquisitions and IPOs. Example portfolio companies include Bombay Cellular (acquired by Hutchison), Cerent (acquired by Cisco), Internet Photonics (acquired by Ciena), iWitness (acquired by Zantaz), Kymata (acquired by Alcatel), Promatory (acquired by Nortel), VxTel (acquired by Intel), as well as the following companies which have had initial public offerings: Omnipoint, OSI, Provide Commerce and TeleAtlas. TeleSoft's Corporate Partners are Alltel and Bechtel in the US, Deutsche Telekom in Europe and Comverse in Israel.
For more information, visit http://www.telesoftvc.com.
About Validity Sensors, Inc.
Headquartered in San Jose, California, Validity Sensors, Inc. develops the world's most durable, flexible and highest performing biometric fingerprint sensor for communication and information devices for PC, Mobile, Portable Media and Access Control markets.
Validity's biometric security products enable a wide range of convenient features including password replacement, identity verification, centralized management for corporate network security, secure wireless transactions, protection of portable data, and physical access control.
All trademarks or registered trademarks are property of the respective holders.
© 2005 Validity Sensors Inc.
Contacts
Telesoft Partners, Foster City, CA
Ella Duval
650-358-2381
ellad@telesoftvc.com
Validity Sensors Inc.
Curt Chandler
480-385-3151
info@validityinc.com