Download as PDFMarch 8, 2007
Silicon Valley Technology Center Established as an Independent Company
Dave Bergeron Named Chief Executive Officer
SAN JOSE, Calif. — March 8, 2007 — Silicon Valley Technology Center (SVTC), a development foundry that offers start-up and established corporations the opportunity to develop and characterize their silicon-based technologies, announced today that it is now an independent company, having closed its previously announced purchase by two private equity firms. SVTC, formerly a business unit of Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: CY), was sold to Oak Hill Capital Partners and Tallwood Venture Capital. As part of the transaction, Cypress transferred substantially all equipment, process technologies and personnel associated with its SVTC business to the buyers. Cypress will remain an important SVTC customer.
SVTC also announced that Dave Bergeron, who recently served as Executive-in-Residence at Tallwood Ventures, is joining SVTC as Chief Executive Officer. Bert Bruggeman, who developed the SVTC business model and grew it into a profitable enterprise, will become SVTC’s Vice President of Operations and General Manager.
As Executive-in-Residence at Tallwood Venture Capital, Bergeron evaluated semiconductor chip products and equipment opportunities. Prior to joining Tallwood, Bergeron held senior management positions at Applied Materials, Candescent Technologies and IBM Microelectronics. These positions included VP and General Management responsibilities for a semiconductor equipment product line and semiconductor fab operation management.
“Dave is the ideal candidate for SVTC,” said Robert Morse, partner, Oak Hill Capital Partners. “Dave’s past positions have provided him with the experience and knowledge to take this business model to new levels. Dave recognizes that success among innovative, fabless companies is not only dependent upon their ability to innovate, but their ability to make significant strides in their process development. The demand for custom process development has outstripped the large foundries’ ability to meet the needs of their customers. SVTC is well-positioned to partner with start-ups and established companies developing emerging technologies, providing an environment focused on process technology development, rather than on manufacturing.”
“As a venture capital firm that seeks to invest in semiconductor and semiconductor-related companies, we consistently see entrepreneurs and their companies continuously challenged to find an acceptable vehicle to establish feasibility of their new technologies. SVTC offers the fabless community a partner model that will allow them to turn their silicon-based ideas into real products with superior cycle times, cost-effective development and faster commercialization, in an IP-secure environment,” said Luis Arzubi, general partner of Tallwood Venture Capital.
SVTC has a strong customer base, which includes companies working on emerging logic and memory products and MEMs companies. The investment by Oak Hill Capital Partners and Tallwood Venture Capital will allow SVTC’s management to invest in new equipment, address new markets, expand its engineering services and pursue its vision to secure additional partnership relationships to create even more value as it assists its customers from proof of concept to volume manufacturing.
“I look forward to taking the SVTC business model to the next step,” said Dave Bergeron, chief executive officer of SVTC. “In Q2 we will introduce a number of initiatives that will demonstrate the speed with which we will begin executing our vision. We look forward to working closely with our customers to further assist them in achieving their goals.”
About Oak Hill Capital Partners
Oak Hill Capital Partners is a private equity firm with more than $4.6 billion of committed capital from leading entrepreneurs, endowments, foundations, corporations, pension funds and global financial institutions. Robert M. Bass is a lead investor. Over a period of nearly 20 years, the professionals at Oak Hill Capital Partners have invested in more than 50 significant private equity transactions. Oak Hill Capital Partners is one of several Oak Hill partnerships, each of which has a dedicated and independent management team. These Oak Hill partnerships comprise over $20 billion of investment capital across multiple asset classes, including private equity, special situations, high yield and bank debt, venture capital, real assets, public equity and hedge funds. For more information about Oak Hill, visit www.oakhillcapital.com.
About Tallwood Venture Capital
Tallwood Venture Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, invests exclusively in semiconductor and semiconductor-related technologies. The principals of Tallwood have deep semiconductor experience that spans all aspects of the semiconductor industry value chain. By offering broad semiconductor knowledge, direct operating experience and a high degree of availability, Tallwood Venture Capital builds close, active working relationships with its portfolio companies. Its portfolio includes Marvell (Nasdaq:MRVL) and SiRF (Nasdaq:SIRF). For more information on Tallwood Venture Capital, visit www.tallwoodvc.com.
About Silicon Valley Technology Center
SVTC – a first-of-its-kind, proven development foundry – provides engineering services accelerating silicon-process development and commercialization of emerging semiconductor-based technologies in an IP-secure environment. Our expert engineers and state-of-the-art equipment deliver operational excellence with superior cycle times, cost-effective development and faster time to market for innovative memory, logic, MEMS and biotech customers.
Unlike large manufacturing foundries, SVTC is optimized for flexibility and fast experimentation from concept to proof of concept. SVTC offers direct open access protocols that allow the customers' engineering talent hands-on process development on 8-inch equipment that is as advanced as the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors' (ITRS) 65nm roadmap. For more information, visit SVTC at www.svtc.com.
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Silicon Valley Technology Center is a trademark of Silicon Valley Technology Center. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Colleen Martell
Principal
Martell Communications
408-374-7420 office
408-832-0147 cell
cmartell@martellpr.com